‘Twas three weeks before Christmas with family arriving,

when I sought holiday décor to enjoy when not diving.

All through the island, not a tree was in stock;

the supplier had cancelled, to my open-mouthed shock.

 

 

“No tree?!” I cried, and said to myself, Well, what now?

Christmas won’t be Christmas without those green boughs!

The smell of fresh pine, sap stuck in my hair,

the needles that lay fallen up and down the stairs!

 

The lady who told me nodded in time,

while watching the workers unpack the thyme.

“I know,” she said sagely, “but that’s not the worst!

We ordered the tree stands, and storage will soon burst!”

 

 

With head hung low, I then left the Market Place.

What to tell my family? What a Christmas disgrace!

Other stores, only two, all told the same tale –

turns out the tree-growing season had been quite the fail.

 

Through the store windows, the false trees winked bright,

while the blow-up snowmen lit up the tropical night.

“Certainly there are fake trees and candles,” my fiancé said.

“But you’re so imaginative, create something instead!”

 

Create? I thought, But create what? There’s little to use here,

aside from hermit crabs and sand and green bottles of beer.

And so I thought, and thought, and thought some more,

until finally asked Google for some Caribbean holiday décor.

 

What ideas then did come, what inspiration I found!

None of which work when there’s no Michael’s around!

Purchase some lights to draw a tree on the wall,

arrange balloons, or use washi tape, anything at all!

 

 

 

Washi tape? What’s this? And I’ll be lucky to find,

enough lights that all work, and are bank account kind.

So deeper I search, to find something suitable,

whose spirit of Christmas will be irrefutable.

 

I look out the window, take a walk down the street,

and suddenly it hits me (no, not the extreme heat!)

that pine trees abound, of the island variety.

Their needles litter the ground, their smell quells my anxiety!

 

And so I run off, to my hydroponic garden,

Where I find my fiancé, working hard, and beg his pardon:

“May I please, pretty please, take this green trellis?

I know it’s for tomatoes, but they won’t be jealous!”

 

Slowly, so slowly, I start building this tree,

only the best branches I choose to twine through PVC.

Soon it will be decorated with care,

and hard will I pray, it won’t become bare.

 

 

In the end though, little will it matter,

my family and friends will think me mad as a hatter.

With loved ones around having a laugh,

that’s all that I need (and a nice full carafe!).