Thinking about the last day of this overwhelming year and the beginning of 2018 with these words from my ever-favorite Naomi Shihab Nye (1952-). Wishing you all a happy (whatever that means for you) new year, dear readers.
“Burning the Old Year”
Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
live in the layers 