All I Want for Christmas is a Real Haiku

Cousins running wild;

aunts and uncles smile and sip

Mogen David wine.

Father bastes at stove:

turkey with oyster dressing;

Mother makes mince pie.

Aluminum tree;

color light reflector turns,

casting blue green red.

Air rifles in hand,

two boys stalk the woods seeking

unsuspecting bird.

Christmas hopes destroyed:

teacher says Santa is not.

Puppy restores faith.

Over at TweetSpeak Poetry, Seth Haines has a holiday poetry prompt – write a haiku (or two or three) about holiday memories from this time of the year (which I will call the Christmas season to my dying day, never mind all these other names we invent). I’m of two minds as to whether I write real haiku poems or not; they have the right number of syllables in each line, but I’m still not sure. They don’t seem quite haiku-ish (in fact, they read more like tabloid newspaper headlines).

Nevertheless, they represent real memories. And yes, I did get a an air rifle (we called them BB guns) one Christmas, but it wasn’t a Red Ryder. And I didn’t shoot my eye out.

These poems are also submitted for Open Mike Night at dVerse Poets. The links for all the poems submitted will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

Photograph by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.