4. Santa Claus: Santa Cruz

In December, 1985, recently returned to the U.S.

after some years in Canada, a free lance writer

in search of a story, I sought and found

employment as a Rent-a-Santa Claus.  Imagine walking

into the local Community Center and suddenly, at the

sight of 400 children, feeling transformed from

one's skinny, sad-eyed self, into an elf--having to

chant the prescribed syllables, "Ho, Ho, Ho."

         What is poetry?  For me, it's the restrained music

of a switchblade knife.  It's an amphibious warship

magically transformed into a basketball court, and

then transformed again into a movie theater showing

a film about the life of Joan of Arc.  It is the

vision of an amnesiac, bleeding from a head injury,

witnessing the play of sunlight on a redbrick wall.

         Poetry comes to a bearded Jewish wanderer, pulling

on a pair of high rubber boots with white fur, and a

set of musical sleigh bells, over blue, fleece-lined

sweat pants.  It comes to the father of five

children bearing gifts for 400 and, choked up,

unable to speak, alternately laughing and sobbing

the three traditional syllables--Ho, Ho, Ho--hearing

at the same time, in his heart, the more plaintive,

tragic--Oi vay, Oi vay, Oi vay.

---------------------------

for more, please see Four Incarnations, Coffee House Press. The material also appears in *New & Selected Poems, 1957-2011, Red Hen Press.

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