In the post-Christmas languor
Approaching the New Year—
Heart and belly sated
Full with seasonal cheer—
While bagging up the gift-wrap,
Under a pile of mail
I glimpsed a red-trimmed postcard:
Orvis having a sale.
Under the pizza leaflets,
Envelopes for the poor,
Local IT repair firms—
All offered through my door;
Proclaimed the Orvis postcard
(I’m sure it said, I swore!),
For sale: hundreds of poems,
All “at half-price or more.”
“What are these wondrous tidings?”
I said, and in my haste,
Pulled on my boots and raincoat,
“There is no time to waste!
I’ll go straight to Dover Street
To find this sacred store,
There to buy us some poems
All for half-price or more.”
In my granddad’s day, he got
A sonnet for his daughter.
Even then they were not cheap—
Sixpence for a quarter.
But he would be shocked to see
At the Orvis store,
Poems of all size and shapes
For sale; half-price or more.
In my mind I saw it clear:
New poems by the pound!
Finely graded, freshly picked,
In spoonfuls heaped and round.
Or, perhaps, they’d sell by length,
Laid out across the floor:
I’d get three yards of sonnet
And pay half-price or more.
I’d try all their limericks
And even haikus too—
And to the fair assistant,
I’d say, “And one for you?”
I’d hurry then, and take the card
(‘Cause it would be a mess
If what they really meant to say
Wasn’t “half-price or less”).
As I reached to take the card,
My hand upon the door,
A pizza leaflet shifted;
I saw the line once more:
An ‘i’ and ‘t’ were covered—
Not ‘poems’ at the store—
It read “Hundreds of items
All at half-price or more.”
Dashed was my Christmas vision—
There was no sacred store
With yards and heaps of sonnets
And verses on the floor.
Curse your eight-pointed snowflakes!
(Your grammar’s also poor.)
Yet still I’ll dream of poems
Hundreds: half-price, or more.
Bah humbug.