While Mother strung the tree with tinsel,
I snatched what dropped unnoticed
and laid the lead strips across railroad tracks
then waited beneath blue bulbs of light
and pine needles for the spark and crackle.

Some ornaments went back generations,
and I’d cover my mouth with excited hands
and smother squeals of glee
when Botch batted one off the Christmas tree
over the lamp into a wall with his tail.

I stomped the floor for all I was worth
and—due to a short in the wiring—made the angel
perched on the pine peak blink.
I stomped the floor even though I was told not to,
stomped the floor until a spanking
from my step-father stopped me.
Then I walked heavy in and out of the room
in a pout, hoping to bring about a blink by accident.

That defiance still flickers inside of me,
and the twinkling angel, a bright, but flawed star,
given to glimmers of night, and the dark thrill
in the way the angel jumped at my disobedience,
snuffed its light, how it winked at me.

© by John Smith.
Used with the author's permission.