As I posted elsewhere, my mum always said that whatever you do on New Year Day you do for the rest of the year. This year I tried to plan more for desires than do-not-wants (such as laundry, which she cautioned against every year). My list for yesterday was reading, writing, art, divination, Netflix, nap, Tai Chi, and tasty food for dinner. I got in all except the nap. Perhaps I won’t need them in 2015!

Anyway, I wrote two poems, one for New Year and one is a morning prayer (to be sung) using words from “The Flower Prayer” and adding others. I’m sharing the New Year one here:

It’s a new year
marked by a new day,
people cheer and make promises
they never really intend to keep;
which seems like a lie, but really,
it is an unveiling of truth.

Everyone knows there is nothing new

about the day or year;
it is same as the last,
though hearts beat a bit weaker,
kidneys slow a hair,
gallbladders churn a tad differently;
and knee-skin sags
along with the corners of our eyes.

Our floors creak louder
and the dogs bark softer;
trunks thicken
of both trees and man,
but the sky looks the same
and the earth turns on her same course
’round the sun.

We celebrate anyway,
this oldnew dayyear,
we celebrate, not because we must
but because we can;
and in the brief time between
the stroke of midnight and January 7th
we are filled with hope,
and promise,
and whispering joy.

Life returns to what it is,
same as what it was,
and we plod through ten months
until we start to think again,

about the soon-to-be-new year

(just like the old year)
and the familiar tingle takes hold,
the mirage of change
in new habits
that we know will fall away.

Yet we are content with that,
as our kneecaps loosen
in their skin-clothes,
the dogs bark in breathy tones,
our hearts skip a beat
as we walk the stairs to bed,
full of only the future,
and pretending for a week,
that the past is wholly other
from the now.

Jan 1, 2015 ©Pamela V Jones