All is quiet on Christmas Eve

All is quiet on Christmas Eve

At the airport the last plane had landed,
And taxied around to the gate.
Some Christmassy swearwords were bandied
Because it was one hour late.

The Christmas Eve rush was completed.
The airport was being closed down.
Incoming travellers were greeted
And shepherded off into town.

The airport’s air traffic controllers
Were finishing up for two days.
The seasonal greeting extollers
Were quite wearing out that old phrase.

They gathered their hats and their muffles,
Their bags and their overtime dockets,
Stuffed a handful of chocolate truffles
Into their overcoat pockets.

Somebody turned off the lighting,
And everyone trooped out the door,
Playfully jostling and fighting,
With homeward-bound thoughts to the fore.

In darkness the tinsel and banners
Hung limply from pillar to post.
Bright cards stood immobile on scanners,
The Christmas tree loomed like a ghost.

The mistletoe hung down morosely,
No portable fan heaters whirred,
But yet, if you listened quite closely,
A very faint blip could be heard.

The radar detected a presence,
A dot had encroached on the screen.
Was this a flock of wild pheasants,
Above in the darkness unseen?

The light source grew stronger and stronger,
Travelling at hair-raising speed.
The shape of the dot grew much longer,
It resembled an oval-shaped bead.

But no-one was there to discover
If the pilot knew which way to go,
As the reindeer broke through the cloud cover
To the slumbering city below.