Father, the Santa Claus suit you bought from Wolff Fonding Theatrical Supplies long before I was born is dead. The white beard you tricked me with and the hair like Moses's, the thick kinky wool that used to whisper around my neck, is dead. Yes, my rosy Santa jingling your brass cowbell. With real soot on your nose and snow (sometimes taken from the refrigerator) on your big shoulders. The room was like Florida. You took so many oranges out of your sack and scattered them around the room, laughing that North Pole laugh all the while. Mom kissed you for her that was the height. Mom could hug you because she wasn't afraid. The reindeer banged on the roof (It was my Nana with a sledgehammer in the attic. To my children it was my husband breaking things with a crowbar). The year I stopped believing in you is the year you were drunk. My drunken red man, your voice thick as soap, you were far from being San Nico with that smell of daddy's cocktail. I cried and ran out of the room and you said, "Okay, thank God this is over!" And so it was, until the grandchildren arrived. Then I'll tie your pillows at 5:00 AM in the morning of Christ and I adjusted your beard, all yellowish with time, and put rouge on your cheeks and Chalk White on your eyebrows. We were conspirators, secret actors, and I kissed you because I was tall enough. But that already happened. The era is ending and there are big children hanging up their socks and building a black monument to your memory. And you, you vanish like a lost signalman moving his flashlight before the train that no longer arrives | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ELEGY: 16. ON HIS MISTRESS by JOHN DONNE LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY LEGEND by JOHN VAN ALSTYN WEAVER A PRAYER FOR THE NEW YEAR by LAURA F. ARMITAGE DON QUIXOTE by CRAVEN LANGSTROTH BETTS WHY? by LOUISA SARAH BEVINGTON GWIN, KING OF NORWAY by WILLIAM BLAKE |