The Fifth Day Of Christmas Poem by Mark Hamilton

The streets are quiet in these limbo days
that hang between the bright lights
of Christmas and the percussion
of a bubbling New Year,
as still as the wreathes on front doors…

In the dusk that falls now, thick
and quick around you,
lights shine out from windows,
the winkings
of an enigmatic smile.

Your footsteps echo
on the lonely pavements
like notes sounding out, hovering
in the dark…

Do your paces take you back or forwards?
Are they taking you somewhere old
or somewhere new?

The world is balanced
at this Christmas New Year time
like a breath held,
a promise as yet untold.

People shut themselves
indoors, invisible,
inscrutable as
shepherds or sentinels
or scrooges.

So you turn a corner
on this silent night
and there is shadow
and there is light.

We may not know, we cannot tell.

It is the future.

That is all.