Poetry Season

It’s January in my mind,
the ball did not drop yet but
it wonders why so many people
claim Rome fell.

We dance by an old calendar
expressing new ways to
celebrate her.

We measure 365 days to perfection,
even the most religious
so scientific when it comes
to birthdays and moving suns.

Or is it the Earth that rotates?

I sometimes forget, standing
still the supposed whirling around
of all matter, going this way
or that—

Depending of course, on where
you are standing upon viewing,
Einstein calling us to keep on
achieving, E=mc² never a
replacement for Higher Power
and supplicating for better
unknowns…

Switching times, it’s closer
than you think. New Year’s
Eve again, and change leads us
and thoughts forwards and
backwards over what was and might
be—new numbers on our dated
homework or at the bank or DMV.

The ball drops, but not only in
New York. Change follows truth,
and improvement needs you to
admit what is bad, before all becomes
good.

Imagine the rain and what it cleans;
clouds and how they seem.

Without a storm, could we have
the ‘bow and wind-swept blue?

Without the hard, could there be easy?

Without hell, would there be a heaven
at all?

And to those Big Bangers: apply
“yin and yang” to your science and
see that absence of matter needs
matter, and matter absence—there is
always everything, nothing and hopefully
One positive thing driving this
Symphony of stars, whether on a beach
or in the sky.

Ours is not to die, but to contribute
some light, Walt Whitman’s line,

and so with that, what will yours be?

Another drink, a cliché—you listen to
your TV?

School, a job, get drunk enough to
marry, have kids—then realize you
aren’t living your dreams but theirs?

Trust no white coat, and reject
diagnosis as you trudge the hill
leading to real health from its
Primary Provider—Higher Power,
your best “you” firing out like a rising
comet, burning bright before they’ll
say you never died, but supplied…

That need in us to shine.

Then gather us to our people, like
the Jews of old, who left their
lives in others’ hands, departed with
the world spinning as before, better—stronger
and wiser, the ‘bow sweet over
yesterday’s sad rain,

2015 in Roman numerals becoming
2016 once again…

Happy New Year, babies, and may
your daughters and sons carry
this message to the sun:

Thanks. Just “thanks,” as we live
today just begun.