Thinking about the new year, and about New Year's Eves, past and present
and remembering; the dancing, the parties,
the bridge games and lobster sandwiches,
the old friends, the crossing of arms in a precious circle as we sang Auld Lang Syne,
and the incredible sweetness of the New Year's kiss -
and I think idly of how the significance of this day has changed without the beloved beside me,
and then more seriously about where in life I am situated now,
as the new year looms
and as I jump almost immediately into my ninth decade
(astonishingly!)
And I acknowledge that the living I have left to do is mainly
an awareness of the beauty of the gift.
Which in turn reminds me of Mary Oliver and her poem about
"This World".
I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it nothing fancy
But it seems impossible.
Whatever the subject, the morning sun
glimmers it.
The tulip feels the heat and flaps its petals open
and becomes a star.
The ants bore into the peony bud and there is the dark
pinprick well of sweetness.
As for the stones on the beach, forget it.
Each one could be set in gold.
So I tried with my eyes shut, but of course the birds
were singing,
And the aspen trees were shaking the sweetest music
out of their leaves,
And that was followed by, guess what, a momentous and beautiful silence
as comes to all of us, in little earfulsl, if we're not too
hurried to hear it.
As for spiders, how the dew hangs in their webs
even if they say nothing, or seem to say nothing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe they sing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing too,
and the ants, and the peonies, and the warm stones,
so happy to be where they are, on the beach, instead of being
locked up in gold.
And I wish you all the happiest of new years,
filled with this lovely awareness of the most mystifying and magical things
that surround us - so commonplace at times, but so priceless,
and sometimes so ignored in the busyness of life.
