New Year’s Eve – The Consolations of Writing

New Year

I no longer resolve,fatigued by my own failure,all previous years’ zeal turnedto crumbs surrounding my table. Instead I will sweepand, in sweeping, take noteof these archeological layers,the fossils of all these discarded selvesand all I thought I could be: the days I failed myself before sunrise,the anger that burned before the day felt its heat;theContinue reading “New Year”

A year of magical reading

2021 has been many things, most of them not what we expected or hoped for twelve months ago. But one positive thing that happened to me this year was that, in an effort to cut back the control of Amazon’s algorithm on my life, I got rid of Goodreads and started to keep my ownContinue reading “A year of magical reading”

Valedictions

Once the new year camein a traffic jam, at Borneo’s mouth,when the crowds who’d fled early to escape the rushnow bid each other a happy onebetween their cars across the street.Another time it came while Iand a friend were lost in the midst of things,driving from one house to another wherethe champagne was chilledand theContinue reading “Valedictions”

Yet

…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 movementContinue reading “Yet”

For the New Year: Again

And so it starts over: our spinning wayAround the sun; our cycle of light, dark,Hot, cold; plants losing, gaining leaves and bark.If we hear what the seasons have to say,It will be only their incessant bay,Their insistant reminders – at the parkOr down the street – to heed the sparkOf summer light, and the dyingContinue reading “For the New Year: Again”

Christmas 7: Rejoice in your new clothes

2017 is almost over, and today we have two choral pieces to conclude our year with, one early, one modern, both settings of one of the readings for the first Sunday after Christmas, Isaiah 61:10-62:4. The first is the delightfully joyous “Gaudens Gaudebo in Domino” by the 16th century German composer Philip Dulchius. The textContinue reading “Christmas 7: Rejoice in your new clothes”