As Another Year Turns Over ...
Dec 20 2014


In the darkest week of the year
every day was overcast,
a landscape
in a dull grey wash
on thick absorbent paper.

In the muzzy snow
and morning fog
and warm wet air
the world seemed claustrophobic,
the light
cotton-wool soft.
Who would have thought
that the loud Christmas displays
with their high intensity bulbs
would not seem crass, or kitsch, or unseemly,
but more a lifeline
in this insubstantial grey?

Soon, the days will lengthen
the calendar change.
And soon, this strangely indolent weather
reach its natural end.
When a high pressure system
comes roaring in
and clears the air,
leaving blue sky
like the inside
of a hard enamel bowl.
And enough cold
to make trees crack,
lake ice boom
like cannon shots.

But I have grown jaded, with age,
and as another year turns over
find myself
expecting more of the same.
Because history is not an inexorably upward arc
into a future of shining promise,
but recurring cycles
and muddling through.

Which is also a kind of comfort,
knowing that spring will come
and summer follow.
That the first hot day in June
will remind me of all the others
that came, and went,
the endless summers
I foolishly thought.
And against my better judgement
have me believing, again
in never-ending starts.



This time of year brings a sense of fresh starts, as the longest night gives way to lengthening day, and as the new year begins. But I'm suspicious of new beginnings, and my natural cynicism warns me against seeing history as an unbroken line of progress, arcing ever upward. After all, turning over the calendar once again is as much a reminder of the endlessly repeating cycle of time as it is of moving inexorably ahead. (Although if this is the year peace breaks out in the Middle East, I take all that back! But if it's business as usual -- as it's been for my entire lifetime -- my point stands.)

The weather has been unseasonably warm. But the living is easy (certainly compared to the deep freeze of last year!), and I find this soft light restful, the shrinking-in of the world comforting. It will eventually change, of course; but that change will be just as transient.

I chose the title because it gets at a subtle but key distinction: instead of tearing off the old calendar page, I think it's much more instructive to think of the calendar as turning over. So it's more of a wheel than points on a line; more a turning than an arrow that moves in a single direction.

So this poem is an lyrical exploration of these essential tensions: between stability and change; between predictability and volatility; between the excitement of progress, and the comfort of the familiar.