'Twas the week before Christmas, when all through our house
Not a creature was stirring, not even big mouth;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that the MPD would stay in the Square;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds;
While visions of alchy bums danced in their heads;
And mummy in her Star Market smock and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,
Gave a lustre of midday to objects below,
When what to my wondering eyes did I see,
But a rented U-haul and my brotherly thieves,
With their friend Paul as the driver so lively and drunk,
I knew in a moment this was more than a funk.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and gave them all aim
To the top of the porch and to the back driveway wall!
Now stash away! Stash away! Stash away all!"
As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
If police should appear, they'll slip away sly
So up to the back of the house the coursers they flew
With a truck full of trees, and all the wreaths too—
And then, in a twinkling, I heard all the proof
The prancing and pawing of each Chippewa boot.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down Spring Street came the throngs with a bound.
They weren't dressed in furs, but heard something afoot
And their money was crisp as in our hands it was put;
And with a bundle of pine they had flung on their back,
Bought from the neighborhood peddlers open round back.
Their eyes—how they twinkled! Their dimples, how merry!
Their cheeks were like roses, their noses like a cherry!
Their droll little mouths drawn up like a bow,
As the bolt cutters and work gloves lay muddied in snow;
And with the stump of a lead pipe held tight in his hands,
To make us believe the trees were shorn from our own Robbin' Hood land;
Some even sold by a broad with a little round face
Our mother the matriarch known to put all in their place.
The chubby and plump, the blind and the deaf,
And we'd chuckle when at our back door she'd offer a right or a left;
As occasionally with a wink of an eye and a tilt of a head
Some renters were left on sidewalks thought to be dead;
Jamie spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
Knocking out redwood Big Bob; without even a smirk,
Now back to the telling of our story at hand, the one of the boys selling trees minus the brand
Rarely giving a wave, from the peak of back porch stairs;
knowing the close shave averted from one of their dares
He reached for his pocket, to his team he gave a bundle,
Knowing those fur trees were homed with the humble.
Then I heard him exclaim, ere he walked out of sight—
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good fight!”
