Lightning spit across the alloy face
of the dishwasher I was filling a half moment
before a high black throat unfastened
with a sunken bellow that scattered rain
like sodden hair along a sheer pane scalp.
Hell, a storm? On New Year's? What an insult -
because it's been a long year down
for the lonely and eroded angels, the poets
whose orchestras of synapses decay gently
into fresh stanzas. I don't know about you,
but my inbox was a chorus of No, No,
Not You, Never You. It ate me
inside out, but I pressed on in new poems,
both mine and yours - I stumbled blindly
into rooms full of your renewed voices -
reassuring me that silence is not the way.
These are not poems, you all told me -
they are beacons, telegrams, phone calls,
they are pleas, they are screams, they are alive
like the cursive lightning scrawl that paints
the kitchen and bids me stand up straight.
It's been a long year but I came here to say
my mouth is filled with thank you;
strange friends and colleagues, thank you.
To all of you, and your hard work this year.
Your poems were read, and remembered.
Thank you for all of it. It changed me,
for the better, and was appreciated.