“Another year..”
End of another year
How is it that one knows
The end of something
Or its beginning?
My sense is that both happen
Surreptitiously
Like someone creeping into your bed
While you are asleep
Wrapping you in an embrace
And you are not quite sure if you are imagining
A foreign breath on your neck
Surreptitiously, and then overpoweringly
as it eventually pins you down with a firm hand
Till you can hardly breathe
Till you say, “Yes I am awake”
“Yes, I see you are here
And you are real”
Such are beginnings
And endings
And yet we are able to say
Without as much as blinking
Or thinking
That the year ends
And another begins
What ends? What begins?
Perhaps the saying makes it so
Perhaps it is humane
Perhaps it keeps us sane
A sense of control
To put a dot in time
In time!
And say, “Here, an ending.
Here. A beginning.”
“Here, a branch
To steady yourself for a while
Riding the ocean of time
To steady for a moment, just enough
to exhale in celebration or deference
at endings
..to inhale, pump up your chest
in hope, in preparation
at beginnings
Here, take a moment to own them
Even as they have a life of their own”
I am holding the branch
While awash in the ocean
I am letting the waves wash
Another year, off my skin
It is tricking gently down in places
Drowning me in others
Bouncing me playfully yet elsewhere
Even seeping within
See, now it is peeling old skin
I stay… I stay
Fingers tightening around the branch
Who knows.. Who is to say
If it is a loss- a losing of skin
Or deep cleansing
I stay.. I stay
Put a dot in time and say
“Another year begins.”
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