Santa

Santa

Above Helpstone

the hawk circles

the house that I have failed.

There is a small body

caught in his claws

it cries to the hawk in fear.

I said, beat, beat strange wings,

what is won then lost

comes back with the fiercest pain.

                                                                David Whyte

                                                                John Clare’s Madness

I stopped knowing there was a human

Santa Clause when on Christmas

morning the doll I’d wanted all year,

the one with her own benign face

and pink lace canopy bassinette,

was there anyway.  Earlier in the summer,

when the J C Penny Christmas catalogue

came in the mail and it was my turn to

look I spent a long time on Tonto and the Lone

Ranger and their horses Scout and Silver.

They rode wherever the hell

they wanted and saved every lady

and kicked the shit out of every

bad guy.  Even the kids felt safe

when the dust cleared and the dead

lay in the streets and even though 

Tonto stood back and let the white man take

all the credit and all the land he was still

my hero.  Playing  with my brother 

I was always the Indian

because I felt braver that way and I had

braids and I died every day.

My homemade bow and arrows would

break when I pulled back the "sin-

ew" yarn too far and the living 

alder branch we’d split from her tree

started dying too and it would be

spring before I made or even could make

more.  They never lasted the winter.  But

I should’ve put a store ahead anyway,

a hundred at a time, it was that easy 

but it meant stealing 

the yarn it meant no mittens

though I couldn’t have known that I just

couldn’t.  Instead I stole away the before-

Christmas- blizzards taking turns

with that catalogue and staring at the doll

men who made me brave just by wanting them

in my hands.  And when I asked for them

over the pink baby doll (and I’d liked her too but

she couldn’t save me, I’d have to

save her and I didn’t know if I was

Indian enough) and waited and waited

for the tree, for Santa (we had a stove

pipe, which complicated belief: how he

negotiated that twist and flame—

sometimes when my father

opened the woodstove door I’d wonder

how Santa would not get burned coming  down

through or if he’d get stuck in the elbow

of the pipe, or the flue might be pushed out

of his favor or he’d choke on creosote)

and a few days before he was set

to arrive at his midnight appointed time

I’d somehow lost my turn with the catalogue

and I don’t know but my mother

screamed and screamed at me

that I wouldn’t get the doll and that Santa

wouldn’t be coming and I was such

a bitch and a whore.  The secret was out

and I was shocked to finally know that she

had more power than Santa.  And more that

it was another year I wouldn’t

get Tonto or the Lone Ranger.  And when

on Christmas morning the doll and her

tulle pink canopy and carriage were there

anyway (and even my brother didn’t get a horse

and rider) I thought that the low fire

in the woodstove would never be

revived, that Santa maybe kicked snow

down the chimney and the cold of the morning

made me dizzy.  In the small dark

of that day I felt my head ache and ache

as every bit of him flashed away.  And I tried

to be a good mother, and maybe

there were days when I was, maybe there were.

I did get what I thought I wanted or deserved,

even if she was second

on my list.  But she knew it, poor thing,

the doll.  She came with a tomb-

stone sketched into the back of her plastic

skull.  And I kissed that spot more and more

as the year bore out and I cut my hair

and the Indian in me went out,

as quick and faithful as Santa, out

of the kid who believes they’ve been bad,

because after that I knew I was.  And too,

always would be.