The star shone upon the recently born tree, as it was presented to a loving fruitcake.

Or

The birth of a star coincides with the flowering of the magestic fruitcake, tree, and the traditional giving of presents.

Or

When you wish upon a star, fruitcake fruitcake, where's birth, tree tree tree, a birthday present shines for you...

Or

Birth of fruitcake heralds the dawn of age of tree gifting as presents.

Or

Presents of ostantatious nature, such as fruitcakes and trees are given richly , to celebrate the birth of Donald Trump.

Or,

'..Or is it a birth canal?' She asked , knowing i am a fruitcake , and consequently cant tell the difference between a tapering cervix and a pine tree, wrapped up in pink paper, the kind used for presents.

The first clue the strawberries were ripe was usually the scent of crushed berries.

When you spent as much time as we did camping and hiking in the Rocky Mountains west of Calgary, strawberry season was one of the things we always looked forward to.

Anticipation always lasted for a couple of weekends, sometimes three before the tiny red morsels of sweetness were ready to pick.

The distinctive leaves were the first sign the plants were coming back from a winter buried under snowdrifts. Usually we found the first ones in open meadows in the middle of a Douglas Fir forest in Kootenay National Park. We had a favorite campsite there, and a hike to a beaver pond usually gave us the first sightings of tiny green leaves working their way up between fresh green grass sprouts.

The next weekend, we would find the ones clustered around the bottom of massive rough barked firs in the humus of dead needles shed from drooping branches. Mom would always tell us to be careful where we put our feet. Not one of us wanted to crush one of the berries when it was such a treat to pluck them from between the tiny white flowers blooming all around. Each flower promising another delicate treat for us to pick.

Inevitably one of us would step on a plant the the tangy scent would give away the location of the first ripe red fruit. Dropping into a crouch, the hunt was on and on the first weekend, not one went into an improvised basket to take back to camp. Our hats stayed on our heads, and the berries popped into our mouths, straight from the ground hugging plants without the benefit of cleaning them like you do fruit from the store. Nothing compares to fresh from the plant wild strawberries, unless it's the raspberries you find in late August hoping a bear hasn't beat you to them first.

you can't force a white Christmas

in the same way I can't seem

to produce serotonin

snow that won't come

snowflakes stuck somewhere

up in the sky where my head is

writing poems on wrapping paper

when I didn't get what I wanted

I'm all out of creative juices

where's Santa Claus when

you need him

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It is 61° outside where I am now.

As a kid, the best part of Thanksgiving was dad taking me and my brother sledding on the big hill to get out of mom's hair while she was making our holiday meal.

Weather, it turns out, is arbitrary.

61°, while there should be some science on how it should make humans feel, turns out to be experienced completely different based on age, place and attitude.

I have a husband who is always telling me how great we have it having moved to Florida where it is always warm and, most of all, there is no snow for him to shovel.

He tells me about the fine weather a lot as if to convince me that residing in 61° at Thanksgiving is a compelling reason to be happy.

"You should be happy", he says

I smile to please him but my mind is wrapped up in the smells and comfort of being swaddled in two layers of clothes under my coat snow kicking up on my bright red cheeks zipping down a hill head first thinking I really could sense the fragrance of mom's turkey somewhere in the distance.

I am a writer.

Am I a writer?

When do I go from a writer

Who waits

To a waiter

Who writes as a hobby?

I'm not a waiter.

Why'd I say waiter?

What metaphor am I trying to achieve?

That's it --trying

Always reaching

Never grasping

Always just shy

Or this close.

No awards, no accolades

No recognition

No published work

And I'm thirty.

Not an ingenue

Not a new voice

Not a brilliant prodigy.

Thirty

And my book is still half written

And my poems are still trite

And naive

And irrelevant

Ever increasingly irrelevant

Because as I grow older

I fall ever away

From the people, to which

I long to relate

I am a writer.

Am I a writer?

Sometimes I wonder

Because I feel like a writer

When one line of brilliance

Hits my insomniac mind

And I cannot sleep

Until it's written

On any scrap of paper

To be found

But I wake up in the morning

And that sentence, so profound

Is gibberish, it makes no sense

Am I a writer?

I write a new word

But I hate it

The old word was better

But no longer fits

I feel like that word

Never right, never fitting

Always searching

I think I lost my generation

Or maybe it doesn't exist

Because we're all consumed

With chasing fleeting

Fragments of the past

That we hold nothing

That's just ours

I am no voice

To that generation

Because that generation

Is voiceless by choice

Everyone has their own drum

And they beat to their content

They don't need a guide

So why do I still

Feel this need to fill some void

That if I write for long enough

Or say enough

Perhaps I'll find some meaning

They'll find some meaning.

I hold that flickering hope

A candle flame

I make believe it's a torch.

And then I'll swear that I'm done

I'll blow out the flame.

I'll give up forever.

And then I'll wake

And I'll pick up a pen.

Did you see his hand on my thigh? Did your headphones mask the words he whispered in my ear? I was eleven, walking home from school. How could he mistake me for eighteen? Did you? I look just like your mother, is that why you looked away? Were you ashamed? Aroused? Curious? Annoyed? Laughing? Did I deserve it? So disappointed. In you, for looking away. And in me, for knowing I'd have done the same. Lest it happened to me.

there's a painting

by Vincent van Gogh

of a bar all in reds and yellows

a master work

before 90's hip hop could be blasted

into the eardrums of clientele

they say he painted his best work

in a psychiatric hospital

in two years

where he was self-admitted

just like in a dive bar

it's important to know

when you've had enough

and you need to decompress

inside what will be

infamous