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Steven Hastings

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Strange Christmas

I never knew how many freckles you had until that week
of sun and wind in Wales. I never knew how many stars
were in the sky until that time on the moors above Buxton,
the black night blitzed like the Spot the Ball coupon
of the Chinese syndicate.

I spy with my little mind’s eye –
a giraffe, a pelican, the design of you mother’s carpet,
a tableau from the last act of Hamlet. It’s all there, even
one that looks like a plough.

I saw this man on Watchdog once who’d made a fortune flogging stars.
For ten pounds you got a certificate with fancy writing and a map
of the sky with your star in red. The presenter pointed out to him
that the stars were not his to sell, but he just smiled a rich man’s smile.
The stars he said belong to no-one and everyone.
We can do what we want with them.

And so I give you a star. And you give one back to me.
And as we stand on the car seats, our woolly-jumpered torsos
squeezed together out of the sun roof, our bare bottoms
warmed by the full-blast heater, like something from
mythology, half-human, half-Ford Fiesta, the temptation
is to carve up the heavens between us here and now.
But we’ll need other stars for other days:
for birthdays and anniversaries, for rows, rainy days, regrets.
All the while saving the pennies we might have spent on socks
and chocolates, until one strange Christmas when
a telescope on a rope will be the best present ever.

 

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