Bless this dusty bookcase
Where they prey
And lie in waiting;
Bound in pages brown
and fading. Fed off tremors
Echoed from the desperate hand
That made them.

Bless the poem that's forsaken
By the tongue that begs to taste
Words written for false promises--
Dipped in cedar, dripping rhythm--
Unfurled to breathe florescent lighting
Of a library that's spent decades
Searching for a new way to say forgotten.

Heirloomed ink is grave-worm risen.
Bless this second coming
But expect to find no Mesiah here.

I celebrate the New Year on the Winter Solstice.
It’s a slower onramp, a quieter welcome than
the cheers and kisses. This day is for a private conversation.

Where is this going?
How did we do?
And a prayer: Let me not forget the wisdom I’ve earned.  

On the solstice I curate my memories of the year into a poem,
By sifting through a cabinet of curiosities with twelve drawers,
brimmed with flattened, folded, and stored decisions.

Soon it will be time to start a new year,
Which will hold new mistakes, new realizations, new gratitudes,
New missteps and miscalculations, new joys and sadness, new
Discipline, old indulgences, heirloomed fears, and consecrated hope.

In this ghostly light,
I look at what was, hold it to my
Heart, and fold around it like a closing flower.