…my road,
My rugged way to heaven, please God.
(Christina Rossetti, “Old and New Year Ditties”)
Sometimes a harvest, sometimes fallow,
sometimes Job’s cut-down tree,
the year passes in a sighing nonetheless,
a barely whispered “Yet”:
yet this is not all,
this is not how all years shall go,
this is not the only movement that time possesses for us,
this is not the only sun our earth will orbit ’round,
this is not the end of years,
this is not the ground.
Tomorrow await ever-new mercies;
tomorrow see what tarries yet
will surely not delay.
The Consolations of Writing 