Do you, at the end of the year, think about the past or the future? Do you reflect on the year gone by, perhaps even the feeling itself of time passing, or do you look ahead to fresh opportunities? Perhaps, if you’re like me, you look backward as well as forward, seeking to focus these reflections in a poetic moment. As Joe put it so well on Tuesday, the present moment is all that we ever have, and it is the poet’s province to memorialize this place: always here, and always unique. The moment is always passing, always arriving. More than at any other time of year, the last few days of December imbue the poetic moment with currents of memory and anticipation: we walk forward with eyes in the backs of our heads. The end of the year poem is often an odd amalgam of reminiscence and hope, a mingling of old and new, the warmth of the hearth and the edginess of that which is yearning to be born.
Last week while I was reading poetry my love came home from her morning walk and handed me the tiny leaf you see (enlarged) in the photo above. Its beauty arrested me, particularly the strong green veins coursing through its thick wine colored envelope. It embodied a contradiction: life and death in one precious package, recovered from the ground and brought to my study. Here is the poetry I was reading:
from Time in the Rock
by Conrad Aiken
This image or another, this quick choosing,
raindrop choosing a path through grains of sand
the blood-drop choosing its way, that the dead world
may wake and think or sleep and dream
This gesture or another, this quick action
the bough broken by the wind and flung down
the hand striking or touching, that the dead world
may know itself and forget itself
This memory or another, this brief picture
sunbeam on the shriveled and frosted leaf
a world of selves trying to remember the self
before the idea of self is lost –
Walk with me world, upon my right hand walk,
speak to me Babel, that I may strive to assemble
of all these syllables a single word
before the purpose of speech is gone.
Our prompt is simple: reflect on the year past, meditate on the year about to begin, or both. If you’re in a more celebratory mood and would like to ring the new year in with a poem, that’s fine too. Drink a toast to your fellow poets tonight and when you’re ready, see how they have embraced the moment. Because of work and (I hope) a glass or two of bubbly tonight, my reading time will have to wait until New Years Day. So for now Go Daddy Go and Swing Baby Swing! and I’ll see you on your pages soon.
Click the Mr. Linky box below, then add your name and paste the url of your poem and submit.
i hope this is ok to put up, it’s prose. i wrote it for Victoria’s link, and i think it fits this forum.
Be safe everyone… and enjoy!
happy new year everyone!!!
for me it’s only 3 more hours away… thanks for hosting mark and sinatra is the perfect choice for the turning of the page..
I have linked up the same poem I wrote about couplets ~
Thanks for the lovely post Mark.
Wishing you and everyone Happy New Year ~
Cheers
Thank you for the nice entry! 🙂
Ive shared a piece, but it’s not a poem! 😦 I hope you enjoy it however since it reflects on the passing the year. 🙂
Happy New Year! 🙂
Whoooo-hoooo! I am kicking 2011 in the butt and making room for poetry and pens in 2012! Mark, thank you for hosting, and here’s hoping some bubbly finds its way to you…this is my one evening to indulge (I normally choose not to, but maybe…) Hoping each and every one of you have the most glorious of New Year Eve’s and I want you all to know that dVerse sits as the winner on my ’11 spotlight list 🙂
It did find its way….but the virtual bubbly is always flowing here!
an old one from 1974…i was 19…and thin 🙂
smiles
Mark, thanks for hosting; and I would like to wish all dVerse poets a Happy New Year.
Thanks Mark, for the Aiken snip and for this thoughtful reflection on the nature of how we deal with this time of year and what it means. The leaf and the poem indeed make one of those serendipitous coincidence that life throws at us sometimes, impossible not to savor.
I’ve put up a sonnet–which I can’t write worth a flip but hey–it’s my last poem of 2011, so why not thumb my nose a bit at my own limitations? Happy New Year to the whole pub, staff and all our valued patrons.
Beautiful post, Mark and thank you all for the past year. I hope we all have a really Happy New One!!! *early New Years hugs from sunny Mexico and the best holiday ever*
At years’ end I find myself in a pensive mood, daydreaming and ruminating and “hunkering down”, so to speak. I’ll have a quiet New Years Eve which seems just right for me right now.
Happy New Years to all!
hope you’re having a peaceful start… after having – surprise, surprise, six teenagers here for dinner, we’re enjoying a quiet evening as well..
I am often in a pensive mood at the end of the year too.
Hi Mark! Happy new year to you! So interesting (to me) that my poem is about leaves, or their shapes. Anyway, thanks much for the thoughtful post and happy new year to all. K.
Wishing all my fellow poets at dVerse a happy and healthy 2012! Write on!
Great send off, Mark – and I look forward to reading the talented people inevitably going to be linking in here, once the holiday settles. Here’s to a great year to come, all, and to all the joy this community’s brought in the year behind us. It has been a pleasure!
Thank you Mark and thank you dVersepoets. Happy New Year.
happy new year OG
happy new year OG!
Happy New Year All! This whole holiday season has kicked my butt so I linked up the only poem I’ve completed in weeks. I’m ready for a new tomorrow full of the kind of promises only the New Year can bring. May you all be blessed in 2012.
Thanks. The holiday season has been very busy for me too. Have a great new year.
hope you get all those promises and more….ready for a fresh page myself….
woohoo happy new year everyone…just got to cleveland and into the hotel room…ready to jump into the party and see what you got going on…guess some of you are a year ahead at this point already…best wishes…thanks for hosting mark~
ok…leaving the party here to get out on the street with a glass of champagne and say hello to the new year which will start over here in exactly 15 minutes… see you on the flip side..
happy new year claudia! smiles….
From my Carlos Williams period..minimal to the point of no logic..that seems indicative of my mental state right now ..so want to wish my colleagues and friends a joyous new year filled with inspiration, metaphors, images so determined to be transmitted that they actualize before you, innovation, and genius galore. Thanks to all of you for your gifts to me in 2011 and hoping for better days ahead. HAPPY NEW YEAR…ALL!!!!
Hello! Brian, Claudia, and d’Verse Crew…
What a very uber post…I like the image, the introduction…leading to the beautiful poem. [The music is a nice touch…too!
Thanks, for sharing!
Once again, here’s wishing everyone at the “pub” a very… Happy New Year! in 2012!
deedee
happy new year dee dee! great to see you…hope you are celebrating as well..smiles.
In just 15mins?…Well, Happy New Year! to you Claudia, and all those who live in Germany.
deedee 🙂
happy new year to you as well DeeDee!!
Happy New Year to all of these wonderful writers @ Dverse. I linked up a little something for everyone.. Saving my new poem for 1/1/2012!!!
Happy 2012!!!!!!!
Lynne
that was a nice hit lynne….happy new year!
Very tight words to describe the passing of time and the moment in the middle. Ol’ Blue Eyes has it goin’ on. Nice touch. Happy 2012! May our craft and imagination increase to serve the soul and spirit of others….
Originally I wanted to post the song “I See it Now” but there isn’t a good recording of it on youtube. This one works great though.
Happy New Year, everyone, and thanks for sending off the old and bringing in the new one for us, Mark! 😀
Happy New Year and a toast all around to good friends and poets here…
so glad that the poem I wrote this morning matched with your prompt, Mark… on this day, how could it not? Cheers to all.
I hope everyone is having a festive and safe evening. Happy New Year!
I look forward to reading everyone’s poems tomorrow afternoon when I’ll have a couple hours of peace. In the meantime – it’s 9:00 PM where I am – have a great night all and I hope your dreams come true in 2012.
Happy New Year!
happy new year beth!
Happy New Year,
wrote one tonight, best wishes.
I think you have to both meditate on the past and look forwards. It’s always a good time for me because I’m still an optimist.
BEST to you all and thanks you so much for all the hours behind the pages that allow so many a place to speak…it truly is a gift to all
Peace, RD
Happy New Year to all!
I hope you all have a great first day, and to follow a lovely year.
good morning everyone!
hope you had a great start into 2012… just woke and thought i’d start the new year with a sip of poetry and check out what the overnight crowd brought to the pub..
happy new years everyone 😉
great prompt and supporting essay, as usual!
glad i woke up early enough to beat the cut-off! yay! 😉
ok so i double dipped this week…mark you just have that affect on me…smiles….first poem of the year to go with my last of last
Who could possibly keep up with you, Brian? I finally have a few moments of peace and can at least try. Thanks for your inspiration this past year and here’s to 2012!
Mark,
Hope it’s ok with you-I borrowed your beautiful leaf photo to illustrate my poem (with credit, of course!) Let me know if it”s a problem or if you want it credited differently. It fit so perfectly with the tone of my poem.
A-OK, lolamouse! Happy new year to you.
Happy new year! And thanks for your fun prompts!
Happyely! New Year to dverse poets! Thanks for the Sinatra clip…great way to start the new year.