Yesterday, January 5th, was Twelfth Night and today is the Feast of the Epiphany. For most folks, they represent the end of the holiday season, when we take down decorations, look for loose-fitting clothes, and get back to our everyday routines. I can’t think of a better way to close the holiday season than by spending a little time with our poet-lawyer friend Roberta Beary (although we’d prefer to do so in person).
Curtis Dunlap had the same idea last night. At his Tobacco Road Poet weblog, he presented a YouTube video of Roberta performing her haibun (that’s a short prose piece with a linked haiku) “The Day After Christmas.” Rather than repeating the video posting here, we suggest you give yourself a treat and view it at Tobacco Road, and then browse that interesting haiku site.
We’re going to let you savor the text version of Roberta’s “The Day After Christmas,” which was first published in Shamrock Haiku Journal (Issue 6), and can also be found at Haibun Today (October 15, 2008):
The Day After Christmas 
(by Roberta Beary)
We are at the mother of all sales, scrunched up against the hats, the no-good, the bad and the downright ugly. Try this one, she orders, and this, and this. There is no room to move, let alone try something on. With stone face, I lift my hands and obey. She is, after all, my big sister. Buy the red one, she points, yelling for all to hear, it makes your nose look less big.
snow-mush
my neighbor’s tree kicked
to the curb
Here’s another pair from the author of the much-acclaimed volume of haiku, The Unworn Necklace:
too tired
to untangle
christmas lights
first snow
at every window
a child’s face
…. by Roberta Beary
“first snow” – Published in Haiku Happens (1998)
.. Orthodox Christmas: Of course, if you celebrate Christmas based on the Eastern or Greek Orthodox Christian calendar, your Christmas celebrations take place on January 7th, and we wish you a most merry Orthodox Christmas. In Schenectady, Xrysanthi, the little Angel pictured here is celebrating her first Christmas season. She brings a special joy to her parents Kathryn and Michael, and their families and friends.