Christmas as Improv

It is grey outside and the air smells like rain.
In the stores, the madness has already begun.

Here, it is quiet.
Somewhere in the distance, I hear a rooster.
My feet crunch on the snow.
It is Christmas eve.

I no longer imagine what Christmas will be.
It has been so many things already:
post card perfect, and a dark hell I believed
I would never emerge from.
Lonely.
Joyous.
Dry as a bone
Vibrant, rich and joyous.

Christmas, I have decided, is improv,
much as it was that first Noel night,
a time of the unexpected where,
like shepherds in their fields at night,
we choose

to cringe in fear, flee,
or run like madmen, seeking the joy.

About this poem

A couple of years after I left college, I took an acting class. I had done a bit of theatre in college and was missing it, so I thought a class might scratch that itch. Most of the class was improv because, the teacher said, “Life is Improv.”

Wiser words were never spoken. 

Tom