Poets’ Corner: Rosemerry for the New Year

30 Dec Poets’ Corner: Rosemerry for the New Year

Rosemerry wishing everyone a Happy New Year

Traditions for the transition into the New Year abound. In many cultures, fireworks are a symbol of light in the new year. While they are restricted in Iceland the rest of the year, on New Year’s Eve anyone and everyone can light an explosive. At midnight, Danes make a wish and jump off chairs – literally leaping into the new year. Buying and wearing new clothes, especially in red or yellow, is a common ritual around the world. In Venezuela, people give each other yellow underwear to wear into the new year for good luck. Poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, the Word Woman, eschews the games. She simply looks in the mirror, sees her future and smiles. Ok, we know, easy for her to say: Rosemerry is preternaturally beautiful. But her beauty is not just skin deep: it emanates from self-acceptance. A happy new year year after year follows.

Contrary

So easily the world

makes itself new.

Like today, how all

the footprints and tracks

of yesterday are buried.

The cars are buried. The drive.

The pinecones. The birdseed.

Of course they’re not gone.

We all know the snow melts

and the world will be

the same as it was, only

it won’t be. We know

that, too. I have dreamed,

perhaps, of the snow that

could cover me, make

me new, erase all the

scars and pains. But I don’t want

to start over again. I bow

to all those thoughts, all

those pains, all those scars,

that brought me here

to this snowy windowsill

on this last day of the year

when the world looks new

and I am so grateful

for this gift of growing older.