Category New Year’s Day poem

Jan 1 2012

Happy New Year – Keep It Real

Hi everyone,

2011 has marched by day by day. Happy New Year to all who came to pause, read, post, or comment. May 2012 be your best year yet.

Here’s my New Year’s Day poem. I hope that before this day is done, we’ll have many more poems posted to help usher in this new year!

Keeping it Real
by David L. Harrison

Imagine a fly resolving
to visit more restaurants
or a warthog vowing to see
his dermatologist;
a cow in a cockeyed hat
stumbling into the barn
bleary-eyed on New Year’s morn.

Celebrating New Year
is a trait best left to humans.
Keep it real, I say.
Resolutions should be simple, doable.
I limit mine to two.

I hereby resolve to take my feet
off my desk
and walk briskly
to the kitchen for more coffee.

(I made this last year,
and it worked.  

    Why change

a good thing? I say stick with a winner.)

My second is a golden oldie.
I wish you peace, joy, good health,
a year of few regrets.
With love,
David

Before leaving town for the weekend, Steven Withrow asked me to post his poem on New Year’s Day. I may be out of pocket too so to play it safe I’ve posted his poem here rather than wait to add it in a comment box. I enjoyed this very much and know that you will too. Steven, I’m sorry that I haven’t been able, yet, to get your poem arranged as you wrote it. I’ll keep working at it and hope I eventually get it right!

AUBADE
By Steven Withrow

Against—God, let me thank—the wood of a cottage wall, invisible through tall thickets from the curve of the private road

    running along the beach line,

I’ve taken in shade from the low roof overhang so long now I must have woken up—may, could, well, oh—before first tide

    below in the birdbath broke,

as if there were no such thing as waiting for, or sleeping in,

    or sneaking up on morning, anymore.

Down the gorse rows that grow along the wire fence,
where grass shouldn’t grow, like green drunks in unlaced boots,
the half-arcs of overlong weed stems doubled-over,

    and the overflow from a rain barrel is a pool

where a trio of wrens shiver cold water from fringes of wet feathers,

    where wrens ought not ever to have flown.

I ask that I should never—God, I thank—again

    stay asleep through the morning.