A new year deserves a new poem. The second half of 2024 passed by completely undocumented. The upheaval of a move and the consequent settling in to a new country took a lot out of me. But 2025 is a new slate, a chance to hit refresh and let this life load differently. There are projects waiting in the wings, there are possibilities of new shows, even a residency. But first, the heart returns to poetry as a way of seeing, a way of believing that life takes time.
On Wednesday
The new year arrives,
swaggering in party shades
from its one-night costumed stand,
defiantly draped in tinsel
and fireworks, low-flung stars,
peaceable explosions.
The new year arrives
on Wednesday, the stuckness
of a week, or, to be generous,
the tipping point
towards the week’s end,
which makes this new year
feel liminal, even wasted,
without the brotherly
proximity of a weekend.
Maybe that’s why the shades
hang indeterminate, open
to sidewalk’s sleet, afternoon
clouds brim snowfall,
a portent for the year
ahead, for the world
caught between
war and wariness,
power and privation,
a fulcrum
that might have lost
its balance
even before
the new year arrives,
maybe too late.
