Sunday Jan 1 - Jan 1 2022

 

Sunday Jan 1

Jan 1 2023

It's the morning after the night before,

as well as the first day

of the week

          . . . month

                     . . . year.

It should feel like a new beginning,

but instead

it's still dull, damp, cold,

and a Monday wake-up call

will follow Sunday's reprieve,

just like every weekend

since the beginning of work.

And I am my old self, as well;

in no way transformed,

and already

one resolution broken.

Still, we hope the coming year

will be better than the last.

The one that made history,

the one

we'd rather not revisit.

But then, it's always been this way  —

after all, as time goes on

it's only natural to expect

progress

self-improvement

learning from past mistakes.

Yet year after year

we find ourselves again

stuck, or even regressing,

and somehow making new ones.

Perhaps, it's just a bad time

to turn the page.

The bleak middle of winter

one day like the next.

So why not in spring,

proclaiming the new year

in April or May?

When the days are lengthening

trees budding

and flowers erupting

from warm redolent soil.

When nature signals a fresh start,

rebirth is in the air,

and the smouldering passions

we nearly forgot

are unexpectedly reignited.

When the human heart softens

and we're more likely to find our way

to forgiving ourselves,

being kinder to others,

and opening up to the world.

This poem somehow — despite my natural pessimism and tendency to catastrophize — took a turn for the better, ending much more hopefully than it began.

Not that I'm that taken with all the New Year's hype (which apparently starts with capitalizing the two words!) I don't go out. Don't make resolutions. Don't expect to feel any different waking up on Jan 1.

Nevertheless, there is something about retiring a year, drawing a symbolic line, consigning recent events to history. At least there is when you’re young, when a year seems like a long time, and a new one full of possibility.

The tyranny of the calendar makes us turn the page at an inauspicious time. Wouldn't spring be a more natural beginning? And what better to resolve than forgiveness, kindness, and openness? (I'd have thrown in gratitude ...except according to the rule of 3s, any more than that in a list is one too many!)