Yulemas 2024 - With the tree elves

2025
The tree elves back for another holiday season
Elysaah, Ruth, and Bobby
Every year
Fir trees lined the sidewalk
On Vanderbilt Avenue
Clinton Hill Brooklyn New York__
Balsam firs
Chopped
Up north from New England forests
My homeland New England
Fraser pines from North Carolina
The home of the Tree Elves
To the Clinton Hill neighborhood
To celebrate Christmas
Me Yulemas
I am a pagan at heart__
I
Sit on a chair
Breathe the fragrance of evergreens
As the tree elves
Elysaah, Ruth, and Bobby
Hock trees and wreaths
Working hard
Every day 24/7
From Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve
Whilst I laze
On the yuletide throne
Afore their balsam planked shelter
Surrounded by Trees
Balsam and Fraser__
Eyes closed
Dreaming
Of 1958
My father walking
Into the woods outside Gorham Maine
Ax in hand
Snow on the ground
My older brother, Frunk, and me
The two of us
In tow
Behind my father
Ax in hand
In search of the perfect tree__
My mother and the younger other us
Back in the Ford Station Wagon
Heat running
Full blast
Windows closed
On a cold December afternoon
Our breaths hang on the air
Paralyzed by the chill
Us wearing red hats red parkas and snow pants
Red mittens too
It is deer hunting season
Always deer hunting season
In the north woods
With my father hunting for a tree__
The land and trees belongs to someone
Not us
My father is very honest
Except for tree hunting season
He born in Maine
As was his father, a doctor
And his father, a sea captain, before him
We the next generation know the rules
One tree a family
I remember
My older brother
Stopping before
A tree taller than my father
Our tree
My father born in Westbrook
Spit in his bare palms
Never swing an ax with gloves
We stand back
Swing
Thwock Thwock Thwock
The tree falls down
To the snowy ground
Sap bleeding from the stump
Leaking the scent of pine
Into the near winter air__
Breathe
The pine scent
On the corner
Vanderbilt Avenue and Myrtle
Hundreds of miles away from the Maine woods
Decades distant from my youth
Clouds overhead
Colder by the minute
My breath frozen on the air
The scent of a hundred pine trees
The same 2025
As The Maine Woods
1958
An Evergreen memory
From long ago
Now Winter
Coming Soon
As alway
sWintah
On Clinton
With the tree elves
Elysaah, Ruth, and Bobby
Vanderbilt and Myrtle 24/7 until 12/24
And up in Maine
Especially Gorham Maine
Merry Yulemas
One and all

From me and the tree elves___

This foto of Elyssa, moi, and Ruth dates from December 2024 I was walking down Myrtle and a local junior high school was letting out and a young teen boy ask, "Are you coming from a Diddy party?" I was angry, until all his friends started laughing and I got the joke. Happy Yulemas, The tree elves are back this year. Best trees in New York. Vanderbilt and Myrtle. 24/7 until 12/24