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A new year has begun. The end of the year is often a time of reflection on things done and undone, those new born and those lost, and lots of lists with opinions of the best things from the past year. Another page in the history book is finished.
In "
The New Year" by Carrie Williams Clifford, the mood is optimistic.
The New Year comes —
fling wide,
fling wide the door
of Opportunity!
But for every person who views the new year optimistically with hope and opportunity, there is at least one other person who is glad to leave the old year behind.
In "Burning the Old Year" by Naomi Shihab Nye (from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems) we have a figurative fire that burns lists, notes and partial poems because "So much of any year is flammable... and so little is a stone." The burning is not in anger. I imagine the fire is not even intentional. Some things just burn themselves into the past and "only the things I didn’t do /
crackle after the blazing dies."
I once loaded a pile of notebooks, letters, and poems into my fire pit on a snowy January day. They were things that after years I had never returned to, never revised or never really felt good about writing or keeping. There were letters from past girlfriends, unfinished stories and poems, ideas for projects, clippings that I thought would inspire me. They made a fast and furious fire. A friend was shocked that I did such a thing. I explained that some of those things were saved electronically and might be useful but most of it had to be left in the past and having them made them keep creeping into the present.
What would you put in your fire in this new year from the past year? What are you letting go of from the past year? Your fire might be figurative or literal, or not a fire at all.
* Regular readers and submitters may recall that we used this poem in January 2022 along with a few other poems as a prompt about the year ending. We rarely repeat prompts, but this month we are taking what might seem to be a more pessimistic take on the poem - burning things from the past year. But letting go can be a good thing. Let us know.
Naomi Shihab Nye was born on March 12, 1952, in St. Louis to a Palestinian father and an American mother. During her high school years, she lived in Ramallah in Palestine, the Old City in Jerusalem, and San Antonio, Texas, where she later received her BA in English and world religions from Trinity University and continues to live.
Nye is the author and/or editor of more than 30 volumes, including Grace Notes: Poems about Family, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East and Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. She is also the author of several books of poetry and fiction for children, including Habibi, for which she received the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award in 1998. Nye gives voice to her experience as an Arab American through poems about heritage and peace that overflow with a humanitarian spirit. She has traveled to the Middle East and Asia for the United States Information Agency (USIA) three times, promoting international goodwill through the arts
WE´VE BURNED THE OLD YEAR
and, hotter still, the next one will burn too.
We´re good at deferring some pleasures
but deferred life or death seems beyond our grasp.
And so the world burns.
And we can't solve this by taking out biscuits and marshmallows.
Rachel Vanbora
STUPID HATS
New Year, you are a tired old trope
whose nails have grown too long.
Who can stand you anymore?
You stir in your stale sheets and sour smoke-scent
wondering what all the fuss was about.
The fuss was about hope, pal! Happiness.
Our rescue flare, our operating-room transfusion,
the next thrilling installment, a hot futures market,
Opening Day.
That’s why the hoopla.
That’s why the confetti and the balloons of many colors,
the stupid hats.
Let’s face it.
You’re nothing but an excuse to have a party,
and a party has never changed anything
except how we felt in the morning,
rarely better.
And what do you do from here except stretch out like pastry dough
thinning with each desultory day?
I don’t know why we ever bothered.
Henceforth and forever, let hope be on us.
Let us get up early and make our beds without griping.
Let us put on our yoga pants and pursue the lotus-sweat of happiness.
And while we’re at it, let us carpe diem a bit, too,
each day, for no one knows the end,
why waste one?
But when time circles back ‘round like a drain
and coos in our ears, as it does,
let no one blame us if we want to dust off our wits again
and laugh in your feckless face
—a small gathering, at home this time—
to pop the cork on our fizzy anesthetics
so that we can for just a few cozy fireside-hours forget
that every butter-bright tomorrow
always, always, always
brings death.
Charles S. Cobean
SORTING
Boxes filled with might need,
with can't trash,
with once so important.
They've traveled with me --
home to home, job to job --
haunting me like a cold
nearly never gone.
Some are filled with painter's tape,
unused rollers, tools and screws
with once-singular purpose.
Others with pictures and relics of
commitment and tenderness
remembered and misremembered.
Now that there will be
no more moves, save one,
I'll clean the tools
and put the words nearer
to the shredder and sigh
when the power button glows.
Rob Friedman
SHREDDING
My shredding got out of hand.
I started with old tax stuff,
two-year-old bills paid in full,
but the file cabinet was still
stuffed with paper history.
I thought paperless was the way
of a future now in the past.
Shredding because the far right
might want to know all about me.
It is 2025 and things are being
shredded across the country.
Documents, letters, laws, rights,
the Constitution, poetry, love letters,
insurance forms, history, your mail.
My neighbor says he'll take my shreds
and use them in his compost so they
"will have another life" helping his
tomatoes, peppers and eggplant.
I'm more excited about this aspect
of the future than anything on the news.
Fill in this last line with whatever you choose.
Pamela Milne
SUNRISE CLEANSE
Hiking up dripping trails shaking off morning's dew
Jagged horizon's glow of orange and yellow hue
Outlining eastern peaks, dark distant silhouettes.
Woodpeckers search for bugs, forest castanets.
Four thousand foot climb done, awaiting sun's first beam,
Hovering fog sits still, leaves Hood Canal unseen.
Ungrateful thoughts well up from the depths of my soul
Like steam rising from earth, heat from a fumarole.
Toxic unhealthy words sent to scatter above,
Wanting space in my heart for only lines of love.
Arms raise, eyes lift upward as the sun's first beam shines,
Inhaling all my pain, exhaling valentines.
Leslayann Schecterson
DECEMBER 31
The empty grate
waits in the fireplace,
patient but craving
a banquet of flame.
Beneath it I crumble
cell phone pings
insistent as cries
of a hungry infant,
T.V. pleas for donations and votes,
and the smell of cigars
in my smoke-free office.
Next, I build a tent of kindling:
the haircut that mimicked
a city skyline, the busker
who played his only song
below my window for almost a year,
the phone calls on hold
for half an hour, then severed
like limbs of wartime victims.
Finally, I arrange the logs,
heavy and dense as winter slush:
the death of my cat,
a friend's diagnosis,
the tornado that totaled
the home where my family
bloomed for decades.
I strike a match, watch the tinder
turn to ash, and will the logs
to catch the blaze
so they won't be stacked
for eternity
in the fireplace of my memory.
Susan Spaeth Cherry
IN THIS NEW YEAR
Smoke clearing from the past year,
the air winter-cold seeming clean.
The horizon but two miles away,
a mountain rim where the sun rises
but falsely, an hour later
than at the true ocean line
a 180 turn shows where sunset
will fall behind many buildings
then sink for another hour or so
proving almanacs, clocks and calculations
false ideas of mankind to join more
deceptions that we thought we left behind
last year but that followed us here
like a long shadow hidden on a cloudy day
Katie Milburn
PLAYING WITH MATCHES
Some things we burn disintegrate
Others stubbornly remain
Each New Year’s Day we start anew
Yet, mostly, we remain the same
Some things from this past year
I’d sooner leave behind
Others, I still cling to
Moments I’ve enshrined
No need to wait till New Year
to burn parts of the past
Some things, we leave to season
Some things catch fire fast
They tried to burn my cancer
With lethal radiation
Don’t know if they succeeded —
A source of much frustration
We burned my brother Keith last year
My cousin Mark, as well
Their bones reduced to ashes
Their stories, left to tell
Well into the new year
I still have more to burn
Ambitions to let go of
Lessons yet to learn
I’ll mix them with some kindling
Then I’ll strike a match
Toss it on the pile
And wait for it to catch
I’ll watch the flames consume them
Their hold on me evaporate
I’ll walk away much lighter
Trust the coming year to fate
Frank Kelly
IGNITION POINT
Way back in the closet
I reach in and pull it out
The leopard print
Meant for an untraveled trip
Still unworn
I had another once
When I was much younger
Several sizes and two shoulder pads ago
Animal print
Forever on trend; forever not
Once there was
a leopard print skirt
Worn one terrible day in 2001
Never worn again
The end
I take the dress and ball it up
Tags and all
With no real fireplace
In which to toss it
I imagine one
The dress - a sacrifice
An offering of memories
Unwanted
Yet inextinguishable
Terri J. Guttilla
LETTING GO
This is a required poem.
You do not have to read it now.
You can wait until
you’re dying if you want to.
But you have to let go of everything.
You have to let go of everything.
You can start by letting go
of this poem. Just let it
go. Let it fall to the desk, skim
the edge, spill to the floor.
Let it lie on the floor face-down
so you can’t read it. How
to read this poem
when it’s lying on the floor face-down
like a body? That
is the seeming difficulty
of this poem. On the one side
words are everything. On the other
nothing. Just the poem saying
to let it go on without you. Saying
on the other side there’s nothing
as difficult as it seems.
Paul Hostovsky
The End
Last year was year of fire and heat
the forests are burning,
the cities are burning
in Gaza even babies are burning.
This year opens with floods and cold
But the forests are still burning,
the cities are still burning
and in Gaza babies are still burning.
Water no longer is sufficient
to douse the flames.
Cold can no longer
quell the heat.
There seems nothing now
that will put them out,
the eternal flames
of last year's fires.
Lynn White