Christmas Serenade

It’s amazing how much of a house you can see with the front door wide open

Gaping like a toothless grin full of warm white light

Perhaps music plays out

Or more likely the sound of a TV show no one is watching

You can see

At this time of year

The Christmas lights hanging from the doorway

Perhaps a half-decorated Christmas tree

Children littering the floor in front of it

The adults laughing and carrying on in the kitchen

Just out of view or walking past the doorway

With some sort of wine sloshing from their cups

A smell

Of gingerbread and cider

Cookies and peppermint

Wafting out into the street

Perhaps smoke reaching upwards from the roof

Barely visible with all the lights

Turn slightly and a giant Santa

Obstructs your view

A glow of more lights outlining him

To be a dark shadow around the edges

This is how you continue

Through the neighborhoods

Admiring lights

And the wafting smells reach out to your nose

Enveloping you in warmth

Despite the cold almost snow weather

Then

Like a gaping hole among the bright stars

A blackened lot

Visible only by the sunbeams surrounding

An admonished place

Hardly a home

The darkness so thick

This

Is how the neighborhood looks

All the rest of the year