A Miracle Just Off East Pike Street

'Twas the night before Christmas, 2012,
Our kids were too old for reindeer and elves.
My daughter, who once was a pixie so curly,
Was now a young lady, sarcastic and surly.
Who asked not for the horsies and dollies of late,
But who'd sulked off to bed, yawning "wake me by eight".
And my son, who had asked for only new duds,
Was immersed in a group chat with, like, nine of his buds.
In the year still ahead he'd be leaving for school,
And undoubtedly downplaying the genes in his pool.
My wife now aslumber, her mission complete,
Having rendered the most candy cane house on our street,
As a vision of Yuletide splendor extreme.
A bright shining target for Claus and his team.
No corner un-tinseled, no shelf un-adorned,
No square foot un-Christmassed by her Christmassy storm.
Even the walls (which folks frequently miss),
Where pictures and portraits were now wrapped up as gifts.
And now I, alone in this space fate hath made,
Was reflecting morosely on time's cruel parade.
Switching on the TV with a deep lonesome breath,
Revealed only a list of that year's noted deaths.
On scrolled the names, and their deeds and the dates,
And for none paused the roll of the doomed and their fate.
Reminded, was I, as I surveyed life's cost,
That Ronald Palillo, TV's Horshak, was lost.
He'd died back in August when the world was still green,
A victim of cardiac failings unseen.
So deep my despair, so mislaid my joy.
To think of young Arnold, a mere wisp of a boy,
Who's signature laugh, a key 70's hoot,
In reality - a heartweed with death at its root.
For it had been the sound, the sad gasping for breath
Of his own dying dad just weeks prior to death.
And he adapted that sound and he made it his own,
(As revealed in a '95 chat with daytime's Jen Jones).
So complete was my funk that I switched off the tube,
And lay dumbly and quiet like a poor beaten rube.
Adrift, we MUST be. Without purpose or grace.
I unfocused my eyes. And I stared into space.
I barely could think 'neath the weight of it all,
'Til my eyes fixed upon the faux gifts on the wall.
And I noticed the paper my wife had applied,
was slightly askew - now down, it's upside.
She had been careful, and shouldn't be blamed.
Even up close, 'twas nearly the same.
But where the text of its print should have read "ho, ho, ho,"
The inversion has yielded it now, "Oh! Oh! Oh!"
'Twas Horshack revealed! Alive! On my walls!
So dashed I outside, and nearly froze off my balls.
From my porch I declared to a Town Without Cheer,
"'Tis Christmas I bring you! Its meaning is clear!"
"Weep not for the moments that won't come again!
For time is no villain, but an inscrutable friend!"
"The clock brings it all - both the vile and sublime,
But once a moment is loved, it is loved for all time!"

"And once so imbued, so rightly ordained, 

It cannot be stolen from soul nor from brain!"
"I leave you these tidings most large and complete!
I must now go inside. I can't feel my feet."
And with that, I returned to my hovel so warm,
And lay gently down by my wife's sleeping form.
My heart so aglow that I feared I might melt.
The next morning, I unwrapped some nice socks.  And a belt.