I don’t read a lot of poetry, but I like poetry for reflection (although I’m not very good at seeing some of the nuances!) New Year’s Day is a good day to reflect upon the past, present and future. A bit cliché perhaps . . . oh, well
Ogden Nash is a favorite poet of mine–I think because I mostly understand him! I read some of his poems to my kids when they were little.
Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark, it’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year!
― Ogden Nash, Collected verse from 1929 on
The next poem seems pessimistic. And the beginning is what I think when I try to write anything about the new year!
The Year
What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That’s not been said a thousand times?
The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.
We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.
We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.
We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.
We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that’s the burden of the year.
— Ella Wheeler Wilcox
And then we have the classic writers:
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come,
Whispering ‘it will be happier’…
― Alfred Lord Tennyson
2015 was a good year for me, but for the world as a whole it’s hard not to hope “it will be happier”…
I don’t make resolutions, but I do like to take a look at the last year and the year to come. Over the next few days I will take a look at my blog during 2015 and what I hope to do during 2016.
So . . . I hope it’s a happy year for all of you . . . .
Notes from a Readerholic 