Lights All Year Long - Feb 14 2026

 

Lights All Year Long

Feb 14 2026

The stubborn holdouts

and proud contrarians

have kept their Christmas lights up

for an extra few months

at least.

I’m not sure if this looks festive, neglectful, or sad.

Are they good citizens

 --  in the gloom of winter

lighting the way?

Are they hopeless nostalgics, 

clinging to a past 

they can’t let go?

Or are they inexcusably lazy;

indolent by nature,

procrastinators,

or simply overwhelmed?

 

——-

The string of dusty lights

drooping sadly

above the wedding chapel door

looks like an afterthought. 

They are the old fashioned kind —

clunky incandescents

on a scraggly black wire.

So they aren’t so much welcoming

as tired,

and unlikely to inspire faith

in the sacrament of marriage

or everlasting bliss. 

Nothing seems festive here.

The wedding march

is on an old cassette

plugged into a boombox.

The mementos are snapshots

on Polaroid.

And the officiant

is a suspicious looking character

in a shabby black robe

with an oleaginous smile.

——-

The neon lights flash, pulse, cascade.

They are blinding, frenetic, and light up the sky,

competing for attention

and, unlike our eyes

never needing any rest.

They are visual noise,

as deafening

as heavy metal,

and like any sound

there’s no turning away. 

As insidious

as tiny bits of glitter

that end up everywhere,

omnipresent

in the gambling mecca

where fortunes are made

and secrets stay

or so we’re told.

——-

It isn’t a long walk

out to desert 

on a dark and cool night.

No neon here,

just the stars

filling an ebony sky

out to the horizon.

And the longer I look

improbable as it is

even more keep appearing,

until, looking up

it seems more light than dark.

This may be the closest we get

to imagining infinity,

a notion

of no practical use

in our quotidian lives,

and that our ancestors

out on the savanna

never needed to survive

or tweaked their brains to master. 

——

Infinity

and permanence.

It’s as if Christmas was all year long,

and we always were as kind and giving

as the preachers insist.

As if marriage never ended

and we meant it when we said

until death do us part;

the constancy was expected

not just hoping for the best.

And as if there were sure things.

That you could gamble your way to success

when the vast majority lose. 

And that wealth equalled happiness,

and happily-ever-after

  — or really, any ever-after —

could actually come true.

——-

It gets cold in the desert after dark

so I reluctantly turned 

and headed back to the neon glare.

But there are still stars out there, as far as I know

filling the sky

whether I’m watching or not.

And I can’t help wondering

if I looked long and hard

could I count high enough?

Knowing

that even after the sun comes up

the stars are still there,

multiplying

beyond imagining

every minute that goes by.

I began this poem with an image of that one house on the street that still has its Christmas lights up. Seemed a promising thing to riff on.

But then this memory of a short podcast I recently listened to hovered over it. (Click on the link below.) My immediate impression of this wedding chapel in a pawn shop was of a sad place for losers. But then the genuine idealism of its proprietor and sole officiant made its unselfconscious modesty seem more legitimate than those big glitzy weddings that are all about showing off. The people who choose this odd place to get married are being totally sincere, not at all ironic.

And then another image of light came to me: a shot of the neon lights of Macau (which I initially took to be Las Vegas) from the movie Ballad of a Small Player.

So strings of lights led to more light, and the poem took shape as a rumination on both permanence and infinity:  from Christmas all year, indissoluble marriages, and supposed sure things; to stars that are always there whether we see them or not.  … And even more stars the longer we look.