a humble collection
Introduction
It’s a Wonderful Life has always been more than a movie to me. It’s a balm - a place I go when life feels overwhelming or brittle. Somehow, every time I watch George Bailey walk to the edge and turn back, I feel a little more whole myself. His story reminds me that even in the ordinary, exhausted corners of our lives, grace can still slip in.
But I’ve always wondered: what happens after Clarence gets his wings? What does the next day look like...the next week, the next season - when the crowd has gone home and the debts are still due, and the weariness doesn't magically vanish with the singing?
This small collection of poems is my way of answering that question.
The first piece, After the Bank Examiner Left, imagines Mary Bailey days later...not triumphant, but fraying. She's done the impossible: rallied a town, saved her husband, held her family together. And yet, George is still slipping. He's present, but unreachable. The miracle came, yes, but the damage doesn’t disappear overnight.
Here, she finds herself in a quiet pub in Elmira, seated across from a stranger to her world - but familiar to us from another beloved holiday film. Professor Wutheridge, the retired scholar from The Bishop’s Wife, drifts in from his own movie’s margins and becomes an unlikely confidant. A man who once watched an angel help rekindle someone else's marriage, Wutheridge knows something about loneliness, about choosing safety over joy, and about how love sometimes fades not in fire, but in silence.
His presence in Mary’s story isn’t accidental - it’s a kind of emotional bridge between two classic worlds. He carries with him the wisdom of age and regret, not to fix things, but to offer perspective, to name the sorrow neither of them can quite say aloud. In a way, Wutheridge becomes Clarence's quiet counterpart - less divine, more human, but just as important.
The second poem, Postscript: 320 Sycamore, brings us home...to George, sitting in the half-light with Zuzu’s petals still in hand. It’s not a grand finale. It’s not a return to joy. It’s just a moment - fragile and real - where grief and love coexist, and Mary chooses again, as she has so many times, to stay.
I wrote both voices - Mary’s and George’s - because no love story is whole without both sides. And in this imagined postscript, Wutheridge serves as a witness to both what was saved and what still hangs in the balance.
These poems are for anyone who’s ever come through the crisis only to find that healing takes longer. For anyone who’s ever stayed, even when it would have been easier to walk. And for anyone who still finds peace - as I do - in the falling snow of Bedford Falls and the flickering hope it leaves behind.
Let this be a quiet continuation. A whispered what if -
Not a sequel, but a second breath.
After the angels have folded their wings,
and the town goes quiet with ordinary things,
love still lingers in silence and strife-
this is the ache after a wonderful life.
______________________________
After the Bank Examiner Left
Bernie Murray’s Irish Pub in Elmira was almost empty,
just the hush of snow blowing against the windows,
the jukebox murmuring some slow, aching tune.
Mary Hatch Bailey sat hunched in a booth,
nursing a coffee that had long since gone bitter.
Across from her, Professor Wutheridge sipped a slow brandy,
his hands steady, his eyes anything but.
They waited until the bank examiner -
bloated with beer and suspicion -
lurched out the door,
leaving behind a trail of cold air and cigarette smoke.
Only then did Mary speak,
and when she did, her voice wobbled like a bridge about to give way.
"I think I'm losing him," she said.
"George.
He's still in the house, still at the table,
but it's like...
the part of him that believed in anything is just... fading."
She twisted her wedding ring around her finger without thinking.
"I don't know how to reach him anymore.
And every day, it feels like there’s less of him left to save."
Wutheridge didn’t answer right away.
He only stared into his glass,
watching the last of the brandy cling to the sides.
Finally, he said,
"Sometimes we lose the people we love
long before they’re actually gone."
Mary nodded, the motion brittle.
"I keep wondering," she whispered,
"if loving him was just another weight he couldn’t carry."
Outside, the snow thickened,
covering the streets like dust over a forgotten grave.
Wutheridge exhaled through his nose...a sound of weariness, not annoyance.
"There was a woman," he said, so quietly she almost missed it.
"Forty years ago.
Brilliant, fierce, full of fire.
She wanted me to come with her, start a new life -
new cities, new books, new dreams."
He smiled, but it was the kind of smile that hurt to look at.
"I stayed behind.
Told myself my place was here, with my lectures and my quiet little life.
Told myself there’d be time later."
Mary didn’t interrupt.
She knew a confession when she heard one.
"And now," Wutheridge said, voice dropping lower,
"now I watch Julia - the Bishop’s wife -
drift closer to someone who isn't her husband.
And I see it, plain as day.
The way she lights up when Dudley smiles at her.
The way she starts to remember she’s alive again."
He paused.
And for just a breath, something flickered across his face -
something raw and almost shameful.
"I envy him sometimes," Wutheridge said.
"So young in spirit.
So full of grace.
Able to turn back the clock for her,
even just for a little while."
He shook his head,
as if trying to scatter the thought before it rooted too deep.
"I’m too late for all of that now," he said, more to himself than to her.
"Too old.
Too heavy with the life I chose."
Mary wiped her eyes on her sleeve,
the same way children do when they think no one’s looking.
"I look at George," she said, her voice cracked and small,
"and I see a man who gave up everything for everyone else.
Piece by piece, until there was nothing left for himself.
And I wonder if maybe...
maybe he’s starting to hate me for it."
Wutheridge looked at her - really looked -
the way a man looks at someone standing too close to the fire.
"If he hates anything," he said,
"it's the part of himself he lost along the way.
Not you."
The lights in the pub flickered once,
a reminder that closing time was near.
Mary stood, fumbling for her coat.
"I should get home," she said.
"The kids'll be asleep.
And George’ll be sitting in the dark,
watching the Christmas lights blink out one by one."
Wutheridge stood too, slower than he used to,
and placed a hand briefly over hers.
"Stay," he said softly.
"Stay even when it feels like you're shouting into silence.
Stay, because once you walk away,
there’s no getting back what’s lost."
Mary nodded - not because it made sense,
but because it was the only thing left to do.
She stepped out into the dark,
boots crunching into the heavy, drifting snow,
moving toward a house where love sat like an old ghost,
tired and flickering,
but still alive.
Inside the pub,
Wutheridge lowered himself back into the booth,
lifted his glass to no one in particular,
and whispered her name -
the name of the girl he had loved and let go -
into the empty room.
Outside,
the snow fell in thick, forgiving sheets,
covering all the broken roads
they could never walk again.
______________________________
Postscript: 320 Sycamore
The snow piled higher against the house,
wrapping the world in a hush so deep
you could almost hear your own heart beating.
Mary slipped quietly inside,
her boots leaving tiny, wet ghosts on the floor.
The living room was dim,
lit only by the blinking Christmas tree -
its lights blinking slow and tired,
as if even they had grown weary.
George was there,
curled awkwardly in the battered armchair,
his arms wrapped around himself
like a man trying to hold in pieces that wanted to scatter.
In his hand, clutched so tight the paper had creased and torn,
were Zuzu’s petals.
Mary knelt beside him without thinking,
rested a hand lightly against his knee.
For a moment, he didn’t stir.
Just breathed that rough, uneven breath
of someone dreaming through regret.
Then, without opening his eyes,
he shifted -
just a little -
and a whisper slipped from his lips, ragged and hoarse:
"I’m sorry, Mary."
It wasn’t loud.
It wasn’t even meant for waking ears.
But it cracked her heart clean in two.
Not because it was a perfect apology -
but because it was real.
Raw.
The part of him he couldn’t say when the sun was up and pride was in the way.
She pressed her forehead gently against his hand,
closed her eyes,
and stayed there -
holding the broken pieces with him,
until morning came.
GBS
April, 2015
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