Let it begin, the invisible slide into another year,

feet and minds discerning the way from now to another now.

We have the moment, this one captivating us once more

as it enters full consciousness with sluggish drift, a fizzing spark,

a lone howl arising with chorusers lined up watching time.

The old wishing, an ardor for new and surprising, arises.

The new year’s smallness is made larger in expectancy,

though it will be more altered by random schemes.

Like the barn owl that I saw every walk: it disappeared.

Its feathers amid ferns make me weep. I thought it would stay

on and on, a sign of grace in the strife.

We cannot tell a story before it germinates,

is freely given or exchanged like a secret,

or peered at with a flurry of hearbeats: what will be made known?

And so another year’s unveiling is launched,

subdued, perhaps glittery.

Outside my back window, nothing startles me and yet

the old wide sky pinks up and oranges over,

then greys until, half blinded, I still lean

toward limbs of pines and shelter of mountains,

the horizon beyond current reach.

What is this time amid eternity’s strange magic?

Wind shivers my lashes as I step outside, but there

still remains a tick tick, tick tock: clock towers overseeing the night.

So then let it begin. We have done this before,

made time important as we still

opened arms and found them laden with sorrow,

the unweildy bulk of others’ wants and needs

but, too, astonishment and happiness,

love’s sudden salvation amid wars and storms.

Urgency can move us from victim to hero,

faces cleaned of bitter disbelief, transfigured by hope.

Oh, we are immense in our humaness.

We are brave and heartbroken,

scarred and beautiful beyond measure.

I am bowed down by miracles despite the malfeasance.

And the river knows what it knows as I move

through the days, walk, pray, am silent then sing.

In the center of forest, at water’s edge is renewal

but there is more ahead, women and men

and children rowing and trodding through the world.

Their breath as my breath, their fingers grasping my fingers.

We have learned how to walk on our knees all the way

from sunrise to dusk, and to carry or be carried,

have endured and languished in rock-hewn nights.

So we have lived these times, we have lived them in pieces

and in whole and those still here are living still.

Still.

Waiting for one moment to join

another, this age moving to that,

our scrap-stitched courage leading us

to the greater heart of humanity as we

cross bridges to lights in a beckoning distance.

I am crossing with you;

we will clear a path, devise our maps as we go.