Vox Populi
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Barbara Crooker: Star of Wonder, Star of Light
It’s Christmas, the year before the accident, when the earth
still seemed fixed. My husband and children are hanging
lights on the big pine tree, the one that Becky
brought home as a seedling in first grade wrapped in a damp
paper towel. I am cooking dinner while they struggle
with the wires that somehow knot themselves up in the box.
Shadows gather behind the hills. The tree turns dark green,
then black. The tangled string unravels, and they pass it
around, loop over loop, while I watch from the steamy window:
husband, son, and daughter in a circle around the tree,
their arms full of stars.
Copyright 2005 Barbara Crooker. From Radiance (Word Press, 2005). Included in Vox Populi by permission of the author.
Barbara Crooker’s many collections of poetry include Some Glad Morning (Pitt, 2019). She lives in Pennsylvania.
DILSAD SENOL / EYEEMGETTY IMAGES
Vox Populi 
I read your poem Sometimes I’m startled out of myself, printed in Poetry of Presence, went to your web site and read more. Touched and grateful for someone I never met before.
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Thanks, Cathy!
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Thanks, Cathy!
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Quietly chilling and so beautiful💙
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Barbara shows us how to write a happy poem tinged with the memory of tragedy.
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It’s Christmas. The year before…. And my mind goes to other Christmases before… and I can’t hold back the tears anymore.
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Lovely epigraph, Barbara.
Merry Christmas to you and yours…
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Happy holidays to you!
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So beautiful this poem, that final image. So powerful, whatever is unspoken here, but felt. Thank you.
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I agree, Rosemerry. The power of the poem lies in the words: “the year before the accident, when the earth still seemed fixed.” There’s an unspoken tragedy in the background which gives special poignancy to the pleasant language.
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