Greeting the New Year....

There are many ways to greet the new year...party through it, sleep through it, philosophize about it--or there is the grim reaper moving the hands of time, namely our mortality.  Recently I came across a splendid poem by WS Merwin, wonderful in the very deft way that he evokes the coming of the morning for new year's.  No big ball to drop (which gets tackier every year!)....rather, the new year sneaks in on cat's feet, like sunlight that gradually fills the landscape around us--and suddenly, it is just light out. 

Read MS Merwin and see how he evokes the feeling of New Years in a way the world misses out on by sheer distraction. 

To the New Year

By W. S. Merwin
 

With what stillness at last

you appear in the valley

your first sunlight reaching down

to touch the tips of a few

high leaves that do not stir

as though they had not noticed

and did not know you at all

then the voice of a dove calls

from far away in itself

to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you

here and now whether or not

anyone hears it this is

where we have come with our age

our knowledge such as it is

and our hopes such as they are

invisible before us

untouched and still possible