Christmas Eve - NYC

Let us go, you and I, let us go,

Out into the new york night to make angels in the snow. 

As the sounds of new york sirens stretch and growl along the streets, 

and the new york bricked buildings huddle tight against the cold, each to each.

We are not cold. As they who are outside grow cold. 

We sit in warmed faux-fur bean-bagged luxury, 

Thanks to Greg and Jenny’s generosity. 

They have given the most precious of all Christmas gifts - togetherness.

We are lucky. 

To the events of the year past: 

to the resurrection of broken water pumps, to the removal of carpal tunnel lumps, 

to on call nights and long haul days on the farm, to walks along coogee beach's early morning charm,

to the constant and steady deployment of expertise, to the simple action of continued life, to breathe.

to tired late night submissions at royal commissions, in the hope that we might have done something to help those silenced children, 

to mumsy’s knitted garments with loving patterns and for one of us, to the start of a masters long awaited, another step on that one’s road to greatness.

We are lucky.

Lucky because for all the grind over hard ground

We are in so many ways blessed 

what’s lost is nothing compared to what’s found, 

and all the death that ever was, 

sat next to life, 

could scarcely fill a cup.

We are lucky.

Love is more than a warmth to bask in, they say. It is a fierce and grave yearning, 
a reaching out, 
a losing and finding of the self in the paradise of another. 
This year I reached out and found myself 

lost 

in another’s paradise, 
my life

to be even more closely intertwined 

With hers when she becomes my wife.

I am lucky.

Lastly, to four legged friends not here 

to ruffle absent mindedly behind the ear, 

or to flop a greying snout down on one’s extended knee while exhaling audibly, exhausted. 

By what? By loving us too much? Or is it another tobleronic coma? 

No matter. He is missed. He is missed indeed, chant the congregation of Alan worshippers, although the doors of this apartment remain conspicuously unscratched 

and are likely thankful for his absence. 

But we are lucky.

So let us go, you and I, let us go,

Out into this new york night, 

to a new year of this our continued fight 

to be our best selves.