Which year indeed? The image in Gallery is a photo-haiga, a haiku with image, from 2015, and the poem in Reading Room is a meditation on New Year’s from 2016.
These were my thoughts on writing the poem…plus ca change, plus c’est la meme shit?
It’s a trite topic, New Year’s. I’m inclined to write about the present. That’s all there is. There’s a fire burning; yesterday’s tree, tomorrow’s ash. A sharp wind blows the snow out of its snug resting places in the trees and snowflakes sparkle in the air. Yesterday ( or last week) the snow was aloft, now it’s on the ground, next month it may be in the ground.
We drag the past around with us like proverbial baggage, or Jacob Marley’s chains – forged in life. While we spend time curling up with a pretty past we’re one day closer to our last. While we plan what we’ll do tomorrow or next week, another day to live has passed.
And then there’s my favourite gripe abut New Year’s – why Jan 1? Why an annual event? Does the fly say ‘hooray! I’ve lived another day!’?
I guess the past is like going to a movie of your own life. You with babies, you just fired. You’re missing the snow lift and drift in the air. Who dreams about the future at our age? Maybe the near future – this summer. In the future I may be doing just as I am doing now – sitting by the fire, writing – I’ve done it before too. Reliving the same thing over and over? No, that’s what work is for. This will be a very short poem. What if I leave myself out of the picture? I’m left with the tree that will grow tall without me. I could talk about the rain never falling in the right place or time -water changing from past to future. Found in earlier notes: One year flows into the next. Ideas pile up in drifts. One day is as good as any other to gather the threads of the year and see if they can be made into a whole, a fabric, a graphic of the last year. It won’t be a story until I fill in the holes (darn!).
Once I get punny, things unravel.