The parsimony of gifts, is like
The cheapest your gut tells you to go,
When in the absence of a queasy feeling,
That nagging crawl of the gut,
Telling you that the price is almost right,
And still, when you look at the transaction again,
There is that glimmering wrong staring at you,
Of how that wonderful gift
Is below what you can afford,
Is below the price you’d pay for yourself,
Is below, the threshold of true charity,
And below, the trouble, the distance, you would go,
To make a windfall in emotion.
And the Santa in you in no saint,
Only a miser who looks at the price quoted,
And practices, the fine art of buying a Christmas gift.
Which is just like doing the limbo,
Looking at a plummeting bar,
And collecting the last gift standing,
The price that you’re at peace with,
Absolving your conscience,
From taking you on a guilt trip.
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Published by meandererworld (Dilantha Gunawardana)
Dr Dilantha Gunawardana graduated from the University of Melbourne, as a molecular biologist, and moonlights as a poet. He currently serves as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Botany, University of Sri Jayewardenepura. Dilantha lives in a chimeric universe of science and poetry. Dilantha’s poems have been accepted for publication /published in HeartWood Literary Magazine, Canary Literary Magazine, Boston Accent, Forage, Kitaab, Eastlit, American Journal of Poetry, Zingara Poetry Review, The Wagon and Ravens Perch, among others. Dilantha too has two anthologies of poetry, 'Kite Dreams' (2016) and 'Driftwood' (2017), both brought to the readership by Sarasavi Publishers, and is working on his third poetry collection (The Many Constellations of Home). Dilantha’s pet areas of teaching and research, include, Nitrogen Fixation, RNA biology, Phytoremediation, Agricultural Biology, and Bioethics & Biosafety. Dilantha blogs at – https://meandererworld.wordpress.com/ -, where he has nearly 2000 poems.
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