Christmas

Christmas is never where you expect it.
Not in the big house
with the fire lit and the presents rustling,
nor when the lights awaken
the tree and you should feel something
and don't.
Christmas happens in an unimaginable
place – in a city store with canned music –
in the street with a stranger
and a white cyclamen,
or when the silence tightens
the cry in your throat.

Then Christmas comes,
never where you expect it
and always in Bethlehem.

Diana Hendry (1941-)

A cyclamen is a kind of flower, by the way.