Dear Santa

If we were to wake again one early morning,
still in darkness
with frosted window panes, thick snow
like a blanket of silence over
the garden of a child's half-memory
would we still discover that a kind old gentleman
dressed in red
and sporting a large white beard, white whiskers,
had left his sooty finger prints
on a strategically placed china tea cup
before half-finishing a McVittie's digestive biscuit,
perhaps too rushed,
perhaps confronted by one biscuit too many
on that, his busiest night
of the year now risen to its climax;
to be met by a lost boy's hopes, perhaps his expectations
of all he wished for:
a big red fire engine, that dazzling bicycle
(all emerald and gold) and, best of all,
the Airfix model kit of a Saturn VI rocket,
bearing not just Neil Armstrong and all the rest
of the Apollo space programme we grew up with
(their names forgotten mostly)
but also met by other hopes; our expectations
of everything that morning promised it would bring.
.