Day 335 - Girl On Bus

Day 334 - Hat

Day 333 - Winter Polaroid

Day 332 - Face 1

Day 331 - Silver Bells

Day 330 - Christmas Must Be Tonight

Day 329 - Silent Night

Day 328 - Whence Is That Goodly Fragrance Flowing?

Day 327 - I'll Be Home For Christmas pt.1

Saw Borsch that morning. He was hurrying along St. Politz, arms filled with parcels. Initially he pretended not to notice me but eventually stopped perhaps compelled by the goodwill of the season.

“I saw your brother.” He said.

“Vogel?” I said.

“That's him.”

“How was he?”

“Oh you know... ” He said tailing off.

“Not quite,” I said, “I haven't seen him in close to a year.”

“Ah yes...” Borsch rubbed his nose with a glove-less finger as though signaling to an unseen third party.  “Ah yes, ah yes...” He kept saying.

“What is it?”

“Nothing forget it entirely.”

“Come on.”

“Well the thing is...”

“Yes?”

“Well when I saw him, I mean to say, when he saw me, as it was...”

“Yes?”

“He was sitting on the street, you know?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well it's like this, he was on the street... with a blanket and a box.”

“A box?”

“Yes a cardboard box. A large one you know the type they might deliver a piece of furniture in or a chair or perhaps a footstool.” He paused, “A new refrigerator even.”

“What are you babbling about Borsch?”

“He was healthy at least, in a manner.”

“Eh?””

“He looked rosy cheeked, in high spirits.”

“Rosy cheeked? A cardboard box? What are you getting at.” I was perplexed by the language, I mean I recognised the words but the context seemed science fiction. Meanwhile Borsch was shifting uncomfortably in his Italian leather loafers. They were entirely the wrong footwear for such weather. I would merely have to tap him on his back and he would surely slide away down the icy street.

“Well it's like I say he was living there.” He said.

“Living there?”

“Yes on the street.”

“You mean...”

“Yes... like a vagrant.”

“On the street?”

“He was outside a shop... a nice shop at least. You know the Beggleys department store, where the doorman wear white gloves. Yes be assured it was a very nice shop. Yes, yes. Oh yes. ”

“Borsch!”

“Well maybe it wasn't him. I can’t be sure. In fact now that we discuss it I’m almost entirely uncertain if it was him at all. I mean he has one of those faces.”

“Yes.”

“An open, honest face. Easily mistaken for.”

“Yes a very honest face.”

“Yes... well perhaps that solves that. Someone else entirely!”

I always detested Borsch but I could see his attempt at lying was as much for my sake as it was for his. Under the circumstances it was a brave lie, perhaps the kindest thing he’d ever done for me.

We shook hands and wished each other a Merry Christmas and I remained fixed to my spot as I watched him slide away through the early evening crowds of Rue St. Clair. The preposterous fiction of it all was forming bitterly into cold fact. Women in fur shawls went clacking past with arms filled with brightly packaged parcels. I stood alone feeling the wind numb my digits. ‘Could it be true- my brother a transient?’ I considered, ‘A wastrel? A down and out? A bum?’

My first instincts were to foot around to where Borsch had described. But to what end? What could be said? To confront him in whatever miserable predicament his life had become would surely only worsen matters. What action could I take that wouldn't crucify him on site? I mean for all his disasters he remained a man of great pride.

The shrill wind bit at my ears and I segued into unconscious recollection of when my brother would dip me headfirst by my ankles into a snow drift following the first fall of the season. Such japes were common place; whether it was hardening snowballs in the freezer to welt inducing rocks or waking me at midnight on Christmas eve to tell me our parents had left home. Or indeed the occasion he made a pass at my wife on my thirtieth birthday. As sour as might have become he was, for all his crimes and misdemeanors, my brother.

I decided to let it alone that evening and returned home to where Marianne was preparing a traditional festive dish of salted cod and the dog was laid up by the fire in the manner he favoured with his hind legs raised in the air. I ate silently and beguiled the remainder of the evening sat in the tall chair beside the window watching the snow drift loosely along the street. Troubled by my silence Marianne asked what was wrong but in no mind to discuss it I feigned a headache and excused myself to bed.

There I lay for some hours not quite asleep but not truly awake either. The room grew cold and glowed with the phosphorus radiance of the moon shining off the deepening snow. I fell into a dream where I stood at the base of a frozen hill littered with headstones. Out of the ground skeletons appeared. Although not terrifying at first appearance there was something disturbing in the manner in which they huddled pathetically together and wrapped themselves tightly in blankets and over sized coats to keep their bones from rattling. Finally my brother appeared also as a skeleton but equally recognisable as himself. He climbed out of the trappings of the frozen ground and proceeded to embrace me in a headlock. He stuffed my mouth with snow before finally releasing me and climbing back into his grave where in he pulled the frozen soil back across him as if a clean white bed sheet.

Day 326 - Here We Come A-Wassailing

Day 325 - Frozen December

Day 324 - Night of Silence

Day 323 - Must Be Santa

Day 322 - What's Today?

Day 321 - O Tannenbaum

Day 320 - Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella

Day 319 - Down In Yon Forest

Day 318 - As With Gladness Men on High

Day 317 - Past 3 O'Clock

Day 316 - O Tannebaum 2

Day 315 - O Tannebaum

Day 314 - I Wonder as I Wander

Day 313 - See, Amid the Winter's Snow

Day 312 - The Friendly Beasts

Day 311 - In the Bleak Midwinter

Day 310 - Les Trois Cloches

Day 309 - Christmas Blues

Day 308 - If We Make It Through December

Day 307 - Must Be Santa

Day 306 - Come All Ye Faithfull

Day 305 - Do You Hear What I Hear?

Day 304 - Cup

Day 303 - Lean

Day 302 - Blue

Day 302 - Men In Suits

Day 301 - Monday Is Free Coffee Day

Day 300 - Mirror

Day 299 - Clouds

Day 298 - A Different Shirt

Day 297 - Old Dog Poem

We are old but still living,

The colours are changing.

We watched the colours change

As the year died.

Trudging knee high

Through fallen leaves

On rotten afternoons,

Lugging heavy heads

Bar to bar,

Like old dogs

In the face of cold winds,

To stubborn to move along

From sniffing the same old street.

Day 296 - Workplace Guide to Meaning

Day 295 - Cold

Day 294 - The Winter Fly

What good does it do to complain?

The fates are as blind as these winter flies

Lying dead upon the sill.

This morning I swept up at least three,

Their vacant bodies still intact

Like cars abandoned on a roadside.

Simple as that-

Life a light touch,

A mere forty eight hour

In the light of a dirty window.

Still what meaning is there anyway?

Besides an overarching sense

That all matters must be tied together somehow,

That even now a spider is unpicking itself

From it’s station

And stepping silently this way.

Day 292 - Cat Poem

Though he won't succeed

The cat will try and convince you

To think better about your life,

There's something 

Noble in the manner 

In which he continues

To pull you from the page,

Clinbing aboard your desk

To lure you into his furtive game.

His agenda remains so simple,

It's like the moon 

When it comes peering at your window

Trying to bathe you

In its plated glow;

Motives so pure,

They work only in scaring you half to death.

Day 291 - Cat

Day 290 - Recline

Day 289 - Specks

Day 288 - Girl

Day 287 - The Stream

Day 286 - What I Need To Do

Day 285 - Max

Day 284 - Street

Day 281 - Thought

Day 280 - Scrap - Fine Day

A fine day, 

Warm winds nestled like birds in corners

Of sleeping buildings.

Women sprang from the pavement

Like poses on a first spring day.

We drank coffee on tree lined street,

The kind in photos of old Europe,

Laughing and debating past noon

About a far off war.

Day 279 - Note Book Poem

All night sadness drifts

Behind my eyes

Like tattered clouds across the sky

I think of reaching out -

How lovely the earth at night

My mind run away

Like a reel of old film

Across many continents,

Where horses jump through dreams

In a flash of light

And an engine weaves through darkness

On cold steel rails

And the ocean turns upon itself

Rising and falling

Like my chest in the darkness

Of an empty room.

My mind gone blank

Like the first darkened theatre

At the birth of cinema

Day 278 - Street

Day 279 - Invisible Man