After the Celebration

This is an old poem, from late January 2009.  The economy seem to be beginning to pick up now, but- unfortunately- the foreclosures continue.

                      Hard Times: January 2009

            The new year and the bubbles have burst.

            Before Christmas, the neighbor’s yard was filled

            with inflated hopes: Santa, Frosty, Rudolph

            and the whole gang, spotlit and swaying

            in their own breezes, towering

            and teetering toward the holidays -

            a homegrown Macy’s parade.

            Now all those luminaries litter the lawn,

            a collection of collapsed dirigibles,

            deflated and dead, like wrinkled corpses

            on a suburban battlefield, as if

            the Grinch never learned to sing

            and pulled the plug on them all.

            They’ve been there for weeks.

            Has that neighbor given up

            and quietly moved out?

            Or is he simply waiting for a miracle,

for Santa to rise again as the Easter Bunny

            with all his eggs in some new basket?