New Year’s Day, Plus One

Penning “2018”

on my water bill payment,

I realize it’s been fifty years,

a full half-century. If not now, when?

That novel of social and personal revolution,

summer 1968. Better get to it.

Staring absent-mindedly

at the browning hulk of Douglas fir,

I see needles and branches,

lights and ornaments, all dry and brittle.

Like mine, its days are numbered, its hours.

A UL-approved, symmetrically sheared

Christmas-tree facsimile,

it’s like all trees nowadays.

Never get a bad tree.

Never get a tree at all.

Bushes are not trees.

Let’s put the tree back in Christmas.

And, don’t forget:

Summer, 1968.