That Christmas

That Christmas, 

One like none before,

I found the Christmas stick,

Mulling in the yard, I saw it

Lifeless in the dawn.

That Christmas - 

There was no scowling traffic,

No early rise, hasty packing,

Nor the usual yuletide bother,

No piling of gifts, 

Trails of shining paper,

Nor any shifts put in -

To tend the roast,

Turn the potatoes, or

Top up the nuts.

Absent too,

The pressed linen,

Cruets and odd paraphernalia

That only Christmas annually

Brings in an Australian summer,

For a declining English home.

But there is was,

Embedded from its night-fall,

Rudely upright,

Built of a common tea-tree,

Really nothing at all,

Yet strangely alluring,

Honouring, in a foolish

Humble way

The Absentee.