Why the Tree Looks Bare?

The Christmas tree looks bare,
the one we decorated
with our dreams,
streamers and baubles
now, flown and fallen with the wind.
We spent our precious youth
being in the Association,
the church being our meeting point
and the pastor, our guardian,
telling us to take time
and know ourselves...

Many years have passed,
we have sailed across miles and lightyears,
you and me, in different directions.
The church seems to have
been standing tall,
watching along with you,
whenever I pass that way,
it’s isles scattered with thorns and tears,
that I don’t have the heart
to enter and relive...

The Christmas tree looks bare
even though the current youth
have decorated it for another Christmas.
I hear that same quietness
that lived through the late night roads
while I walked you home,
the church corridors lit
and echoeing with angelic voices,
the same when you and I rehearsed
O Holy Night…
seeing a certain brightness within myself
and how I wonder, where you are...