Wrappers

 

Wrappers

Overlaid in maps on blue ice ozatex skies,

those Christmas branches are bare naked lady fingers,

with bordering latticed stubborn evergreens,

twisted from nodes into unfathomable knotted tracks,

where each road twists and tangles beyond the next,

promising with a wink you’ll get there yet.

And you? The routemaster with the whip hand,

you’ve forked out enough in presents, more than a grand,

while ivy clings, points heavenwards in signs,

but you’ll follow these quiet lanes into a monkey puzzle,

rather than anything approaching a grand design.

Beneath your feet glitters the strewn rubble,

and as you’re later bagging up discarded wrappers

look long within for a diamond in the crackers.