Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Year's End

"A year of ending and beginning, a year of loss and finding and all of you were with me through the storm. I drink your health, your wealth, your fortune for long years to come, and I hope for many more days in which we can gather like this. ~ C.J. Cherryh, Fortress of Eagles

Capricorn zodiac sign, Jantar Mantar, Jaipur, India. 18th century CE.

© Yann Forget / Wikimedia Commons

Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right. ~ Oprah Winfrey

December, fragment of a mosaic 

Archeological Museum of Sousse

Midweek Motif ~ Year's End

I nearly left out the apostrophe to speak of Years Ends, but decided to stick with 2019, this year's end, full of trouble and joy, suspense and certainty.  

Perhaps you will use your new poem to record the details.  Perhaps you will use it to spread cheer and blessings.  Perhaps you will write an ode to rest, and its role in creativity.  

Your Challenge: Let's write to each other in this new poem about the end of 2019.

Bouquet de roses by Suzanne Valadon (1936)

 Year's End
  by Ted Kooser

Now the seasons are closing their files
on each of us, the heavy drawers
full of certificates rolling back
into the tree trunks, a few old papers
flocking away. Someone we loved
has fallen from our thoughts,
making a little, glittering splash
like a bicycle pushed by a breeze.
Otherwise, not much has happened;
we fell in love again, finding
that one red feather on the wind.

from Matsuo Bashō:

I’ve hit the bottom
of my bag of discretion:
year’s end.

another from Matsuo Basho

English version by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto

Year’s end,
all corners
of this floating world, swept.

  The Year (1910)                        

          by Ella Wheeler Wilcox                                   

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.

Burning the Old Year

By Naomi Shihab Nye

 

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.   

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,   

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,   

lists of vegetables, partial poems.   

Orange swirling flame of days,   

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,   

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.   

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,   

only the things I didn’t do   

crackle after the blazing dies.

"Songs to aging children come / This is one"

Lyrics are HERE

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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below 

and visit others in the spirit of the community—

Best wishes for this year's end and the new years to come!