Inauspicious Start
Jan 10 2024
The new year began badly.
A slip on the ice, a broken rib
on the first day
of the first month.
So now, well past the time
when the Happy New Year formality
is offered like a passing nod,
when everyone's moved on
from the festive season
to grim reality,
I'm still living with the unhappiness
of an inauspicious start.
Is this a portent
for the coming year?
I'm not superstitious,
but a fall
on December 31
would have felt different, somehow;
walled off
as stale news from an old year,
page turned.
Of course, the calendar is arbitrary.
And in the northern latitudes
it just so happens
the year begins in winter;
I could have always
chosen to live south.
(Australia sounds nice,
notwithstanding
the poison spiders and deadly snakes!)
Mere coincidence, it would seem.
And after all, bones heal
ice melts.
And anyway, the year
that's no longer new
never really was;
just more of the same
war, hate, injustice,
fear and anger,
climate change.
So to begin with
the portents were all there,
slip-and-fall or not.
Broken rib. Hurts to cough. Looking for a topic, and figured it's obvious: write what you know.
No idea where it would end up (I rarely know with any poem.) Predictably, though, I end up with geopolitics and despair. Nothing new there either!
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