New Years (as always, I am told)
spin from the womb and the shroud,
confusingly, beguilingly, begging
"Turn back,"
to make half-sense of the
retrospect speckles of freeze and thaw
when spring drives
hungry tendrils into summer
stepping from the beach-mat
gingerly into momentary streams,
wave-clop in the hollow of a rock,
the echoes dreaming
languorously all the way
transcending bird flocks urging over
seed-blackened hedgerows.
As I photograph this shedding
tree for a keepsake, love,
we swirl in coriolis forces
one way or another,
faster and tighter over the
looming bar of Christmas.
This New Year (as always, I am told)
turns on the young and the old.
Be bold. Be bold.
