Fresh from the forest, piled on jolting trucks
The trees arrive and wait their picking over
Like captives of some ancient war.
Chosen tree
We lift you over the threshold to our hearth.
There you will stand through the twelve days of Christmas,
A messenger, a presence
Filling the house with resinous smell of pine
Your glooms conceiving needlepoints of light.
Radiata pine, primitive first last tree,
Soon you will brown, an outcast, on the tip.
But for this hour
You hold the timeless in your brief green boughs
The cardboard angels, home-made crib, the straw,
The new-born baby older than Abraham
The tinsel star outshining nebulae.