1

Underneath, swaddled in a bunting 
in a basket, I stared up at porcelain angels
amid red and green lights in tin-foil stars.  

			2
My father walked me down the stairs
with a towel over my face so I’d eat stollen
before I could see what was under the tree,
a three-speed red bike with hand brakes,
the lights I saw before the bike.  

			3
In Girl Scouts we made ornaments from tin can lids
and glitter or clothespins painted with eyes
and glued-on red-cotton Rudolph noses. 

			4
The footprint of my one-year-old daughter
stamped in blue tempera paint on pink paper.
Its green-and-white ribbon loop fastens
to the tree with a photo of her reluctance to get messy. 

			5
A potted fir for my mother dying
of cancer and its wee wooden figures –
a woodsman hauls a tree, a caroler
holds a golden song book, a blue angel 
plays a flute, and a cardinal sits at a feeder.  

			6
My friends take a narrow box 
from the closet, shake out
a wired tree and plug it in. 

			7
The deaf man down the road
grows four-foot trees on two urban lots.
Special for seniors: $12 for a fir
with no limbs on the bottom two feet. 
  			
			8
I ship old ornaments 
to my daughter in Vermont – 
German glass, the apple
with a skater inside waltzing
on a mirror, the moose on a roof. 
I save dozens of gold birds
on clips, a few missing tail feathers, 
and that flimsy footprint. 

			9
My decoration collection shrinks
to two shoe boxes. I give away
strands of blue lights. My next tree 
may be no bigger than my mother’s,
dressed in nothing but tiny birds.