Your Luck is About to Change


by Susan Elizabeth Howeby


Ominous inscrutable Chinese news
to get just before Christmas,
considering my reasonable health,
marriage spicy as moo-goo-gai-pan,
career running like a not-too-old Chevrolet.
Not bad, considering what can go wrong:
the bony finger of Uncle Sam
might point out my husband,
my own national guard,
and set him in Afghanistan;
my boss could take a personal interest;
the pain in my left knee could spread to my right.
Still, as the old year tips into the new,
I insist on the infant hope, gooing and kicking
his legs in the air. I won't give in
to the dark, the sub-zero weather, the fog,
or even the neighbors' Nativity.
Their four-year-old has arranged
his whole legion of dinosaurs
so they, too, worship the child,
joining the cow and sheep. Or else,
ultimate mortals, they've come to eat
ox and camel, Mary and Joseph,
then savor the newborn babe.

Comments

  1. I hope her husband doesn't know moo goo gai pan is not a spicy dish!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love the notion of dinosaurs at a nativity scene, and have often thought a few rhinoceri might have livened up the proceedings considerably. But that is just the iconoclast in me coming to the surface. In penitence I shall sing a Silent Night or two...
    :-)

    ReplyDelete

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Hey, thanks for your thoughts and your time:>)

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