A poem for the New Year

Another year, and so it starts again,

This back and forth of customary time.

Even the rains (must be a storm again,

But still too far to make landfall again).

How do we mark beginnings with all this

If the tail end is where we start again?

We seem to go through the same doors again

Although we have moved to another place,

But somehow the old doors got back in place.

To make us tell the same stories again?

As though in quest of a befitting ending

To lives, which seem to end without an ending?

The last month of the calendar is ending.

Turn the remaining page over again,

Draw in the curtain, find the window ending

With light, which may not be part of the ending,

Which we advance to pay for borrowed time.

And time that starts with you, and with me ending,

A tale which just might have a happy ending,

And it may be no other tale than this,

One end of each, each of us holds, of this

And that, to tie together as an ending,

And then to find ourselves in the same place,

Where everything, or nothing, will take place.

If that which lies ahead is the same place

Then we are left without a sort of ending.

But where roads disappear is one more place

That needs exploring, if it is a place

The map will show again, and yet again.

The calendar is just a map whose place

Is in the moments that the clock will place

In memory, a tree that grows with time

Together with oblivion, which heals time,

Which needs rest and refreshment and a place

After the passage of a year like this,

And the survival of a life like this.

For we have seen lack and abundance, this

Is certain, sun and rain have kept our place

Sprouting with life, and we’re grateful for this.

Nothing has veiled a sunrise such as this

Except the thought of night, of the day ending,

Month yields to month, that year yields to this,

Green of the fields to brown and green, and this

Is what is outside, and inside, again

The highs and lows of passion, and again

The promise one to the other that this

Arriving year will be another time

To make amends, dear Lord, just one more time.

Just one more time, O Lord, one more time.

We ask for nothing else, no more than this—

To step into the river one more time

And be forgiven, for there is no time

To lose, we have danced all over the place

To human music, the music of time,

Hips swaying like the hourglass keeping time,

Moving on the dance floor towards an ending,

Pushed to the new year by an old year ending.

At dawn the river glows, breaks sleep, and time

Is light dancing in the valley again,

To call us all to life, and light, again.

So we begin another year again,

Uncertain and assured at the same time,

And keeping faith, and praying just for this—

A deeper happiness, a higher place

Where we can live our stories without ending.