Parents should be here within an hour. Don't tell Paul, but I just made a giant felt shrimp for his Christmas stocking; meanwhile, Tom is going to the dump, and James is helping to split an injured friend's firewood.

Tonight's menu: corn chowder with local corn, potatoes, onions, and bacon; cheese puffs; spinach salad; hot cider and whatever baked goods my mother has brought along for the occasion.

And here's part 2 of my Christmas poem.

Christmas at the Ramada

Dawn Potter

2. The Lounge

The lounge is respectably dim,

decked out with “old” posters

and swags of plastic fir, all its little

tables and vinyl benches clustered

TV-wise. Behind the bar a lady

with the gravelly bark of a classic-

rock DJ forks over a syrupy cocktail

and returns her gaze to the televised

town meeting currently mesmerizing

herself and her five retired fat-guy

customers, and now K and O, requesting

beer. Happy O rubs a shoulder into K’s,

public-access TV displays a local

fiend in chairwoman’s clothing

shouting wild threats at the fire chief,

and everyone in the room sighs with pleasure.

Pouring out K’s Sam Adams, the bartender

cries huskily, “She’s so mean!”

Her Santa hat jiggles in sympathy.

Through the frosted window glass,

emergency vehicles in the parking lot

flash red, white, and blue like a friendly

disco ball; and down the gilt bar a bug-eyed man

in a pressed shirt catches sight of his mirror self.

He turns to O and K, he leans toward O,

eager as a schoolboy, and marvels,

“Hey. I look really nice.”