Some men count their wealth; some count their hearts; some learn to count both.
Introduction
These three poems explore alternate moral and emotional paths in the life of Ebenezer Scrooge. The first presents his worst nightmare: a man confronted with the possibility of change yet refusing it, entrenched in his darkness. The second imagines a quiet redemption, where Belle’s love persuades him to turn toward generosity and human connection. The third is Belle’s reflection on that transformation, offering insight into the power of patience, moral courage, and the enduring impact of love. Together, the poems form a triptych of choice, consequence, and possibility.
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I. Nightmare: The Day After Christmas
Some men survive revelation by refusing it.
He was back in the square,
coat scraped clean,
buttons polished like coins -
tokens from a war
he’d fought against tenderness.
He said the night had been nonsense,
a fever from spoiled meat,
nothing supernatural,
nothing moral.
Just gas and guilt and a man’s imagination
trying to shame him into generosity.
He laughed -
brittle,
like the snap of thin ice.
By noon, he’d doubled the rent
on the widows in Bell Yard.
By two, he’d dismissed a clerk
for using too much coal.
Change, he said,
was the fancy of the poor -
and what’s worse
than a man who wants the world
different than it is?
He carried that thought
like a flame cupped in the hand…
not for light,
but to scorch.
The boy with the red scarf called again,
cheeks bright as apples.
Scrooge stared,
remembering the ghost who’d shown him
such a child once,
then spat,
as though the memory itself
had gone bad in his mouth.
Later, in the apothecary’s dim,
he told the keeper
he’d been visited in dreams
by three debtors in disguise,
trying to pry loose his reason.
Said the whole thing was a plot…
charity dressed up as revelation.
Called it blasphemy,
this idea that men
might be moved by love.
Evening came with its usual thrift.
He counted his ledgers twice,
then three times,
just to feel the numbers align -
order restoring itself
after the brief chaos of feeling.
Outside, carolers sang again,
voices rising in some fragile hope
that the world might listen.
He shut the window softly,
careful not to break the glass.
He had learned that much from ghosts -
if they were ghosts -
that noise never conquers silence.
And there it was -
that grim conviction
that mercy is a trick of the weak,
and a man must harden
or be haunted forever.
Later, he lit every candle in the house
just to watch them gutter.
Each flame -
a lesson in decline.
Each curl of smoke -
proof that even light
dies obediently.
When the last wick gave in,
he sat awhile,
hands on the table,
listening for the chains
he’d once dreamt were his own.
Nothing.
Only the clock,
ticking like a nail into wood.
By dawn, snow began again -
a gray, endless accounting.
He did not look up.
The lamplight trembled,
then steadied,
as if even the world
had learned to keep its pity
to itself.
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II. Redemption: If Belle Had Stayed
You’re already spending what matters.
No ghosts came.
No chains, no rattling warnings -
only her voice,
low and steady as lamplight on a ledger.
He’d spoken of security,
of futures counted in coin,
and she’d said, softly,
you’re already spending what matters.
That night he sat
at his narrow desk,
the fire thin,
the ink cold in its pot.
Outside, snow began,
each flake a pause
he could almost understand.
He sold the shares the next morning.
Not all…
just enough to hear the silence
after want.
He walked her home through the frost,
and when she slipped her hand into his,
it felt like permission
to begin again.
Years later,
there were children,
and noise in the rooms,
and a kind of wealth
he couldn’t have imagined -
the small hand tugging at his sleeve,
the laughter that spent itself freely
and never ran out.
Sometimes, at the window,
he’d see the fog rise over the city
and think of what might have come -
the counting house,
the cold bed,
the ledger balanced against the soul.
He’d close his eyes,
thank her,
and turn back to the table
where their youngest was learning
to spell love
with his own stub of pencil.
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III. Reflection: Belle Speaks
Another idol has displaced me… a golden one.
I watched him tally gold
as if it could stand between us,
as if wealth were flesh,
and love a shadow
too slight to claim his hand.
I spoke once, then again,
and each time he flinched,
eyes flicking to the coins
as though they might bite.
I named the golden idol
he had placed above our hearts,
and waited for a tremor
of recognition.
It came, slowly -
not in the roar of spirits,
but in the quiet hush
after the ledger closed,
when the snow muffled the city,
and he looked at me
and chose me over all he owned.
We built a life
that has no headline, no grand gesture,
just mornings that spill into afternoons,
hands held,
a child’s laugh threading the hours,
and the knowledge
that love, once given,
can ask for nothing more
than to be received.
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Coda
Snow drifts on streets he walked,
coins and candles, laughter alike buried in white.
Lamplight trembles over windows
where hands once hesitated, then chose.
Time folds the paths together -
the shadowed, the softened, the hand that held him
toward the life he almost missed,
and the quiet echo of love, still counting.
GBS
2006
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