New Year's Eve 2015

Gentle thoughts, sweet memories, the first kiss of the new year, the whisper of love renewed, - and what of this new year that I must fill with enthusiasm and energy.......while Auld Lang Syne slips into evening hours...

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.

Burning of the Old Year
by Naomi Shihab Nye