748 Gordon Drive
Morrisville, Pa. 19067
three bedroom split-level,
the lot adjoins a soy bean field
on a dead end street where the
suburbs/farmland boundary lies.

And it came to be that in that place and in that time,
the universe aligned.

It is 1965 and I am nine and skinny and dumb as dirt
in my burgundy jacket with a crest on the chest and a
clip-on-tie and rabbit-ridge slicker down hair. Mom
wears a leopard spot coat exactly like the one that
every cut-rate store sells this year, and Dad smells like
butter-rum candy and scallions. And there’s Jackson
from school, and he’s anxious and slickered like me.
And Dad’s mill buddy, Leonard, is a grizzly in a suit
and his fingers are thick sausages and he smells of Old
Spice and oily machines.

And the preacher starts it and they pass it till Dad turns and
lights me and I turn and light Mom and the church goes
dark but for the candles we carefully raise above our heads
from the hardwood pews as we soul sing, “…No-el, No-el,
Born is the Ki-ing of Is-ra-a-el!”

Beside the parking lot is the living nativity, and the players
shiver in sub-freezing holy night. It takes a while to warm
the Olds and the vinyl seat stays cold, but the houses are
adorned in light, and I am drinking it all, drinking it all.

We pull into our driveway, and I see Mouse’s head framed in
light, peeking from his bedroom, and I know neither of us will
get much sleep. Inside our house it smells like pine, and the
egg shell decorations dully shine, and the candy dish contains
waxy chocolate cherries, and there’s a silverfish under the
utility sink when I fill Pugsley‘s water dish and I reckon
the odds on a blue-metal-flake-Schwinn-Stingray-Fastback.

And it came to be that in that place and in that time,
the universe aligned.

12/17/2007

Author's Note: sugar coated stream-of-consciousness prose poem daymare.

Posted on 12/18/2007
Copyright © 2026 David Hill