Yes, it is the last day of 2025, and I can honestly say that I’ve never been happier for a year to end. This past year has been marked with so much turmoil and suffering. Unspeakable acts of cruelty. Leaders who seem to have no common decency or humanity, who harm people simply for harm’s sake. I’m not sure the coming year will be any better. We’re still dealing with climate change. Politicians who don’t seem to care whether people live or die, eat or go hungry. And a world on the brink of war in so many places.
My life in 2025 has been characterized by immense change. My sisters sold our family home (the house in which I grew up) and moved away. My daughter is in medical school, living downstate with her significant other, and my son is a high school senior already taking college classes. My wife started a new job (one that she loves), and I find myself (at this moment on December 31st, about six hours away from the ball dropping in Time’s Square) filled with dread for the upcoming 365 days.
This last Sharon Olds poem I want to share with you is all about feeling lost, I think. Of wandering and wondering about life and loss . . .
Wonder as Wander
by: Sharon Olds
At dusk, on those evenings she does not go out,
my mother potters around her house.
Her daily helpers are gone, there is no one
there, no one to tell what to do,
she wanders, sometimes she talks to herself,
fondly scolding, sometimes she suddenly
throws out her arms and screams—high notes
lying here and there on the carpets
like bodies touched by a downed wire,
she journeys, she quests, she marco-polos through
the gilded gleamy loot-rooms, who is she.
I feel, now, that I do not know her,
and for all my staring, I have not seen her
—like the song she sang, when we were small,
I wonder as I wander, out under the sky,
how Jesus, the Savior, was born for, to die,
for poor lonely people, like you, and like I
—on the slow evenings alone, when she delays
and delays her supper, walking the familiar
halls past the mirrors and night windows,
I wonder if my mother is tasting a life
beyond this life—not heaven, her late
beloved is absent, her father absent,
and her staff is absent, maybe this is earth
alone, as she had not experienced it,
as if she is one of the poor lonely people,
as if she is born to die. I hold fast
to the thought of her, wandering in her house,
a luna moth in a chambered cage.
Fifty years ago, I’d squat in her
garden, with her Red Queens, and try
to sense the flyways of the fairies as they kept
the pollen flowing on its local paths,
and our breaths on their course of puffs—they kept
our eyes wide with seeing what we
could see, and not seeing what we could not see.
New Year’s Eve really is a time to wonder and wander under the sky. We’re all poor lonely people in need, as the Christmas carol goes, for salvation of some kind. That’s what the holidays are all about—being redeemed, finding hope in the face of darkness. It is so, so easy to succumb to despair in our current times. As I sit typing this post, I find myself on that slippery slope between joy (above) and grief (below).
Tonight, my wife, son, and I will have steak dinners at Texas Roadhouse (prime rib for me). Then, we’ll play some online games with my daughter and her significant other. And we’ll eat more foods that are completely and totally unhealthy. Cheetos. Chocolate. Crackers and easy cheese. Scoop Fritos. And, around 11:30 p.m., we’ll turn on the TV to watch the festivities in New York City and share in the countdown.
Now is the time when a lot of people are making resolutions and promises for the coming year. I gave up on resolutions a long, long time ago. They never pan out. So, you’re not going to read in this post how I’m going to hit the gym more or read at least two books a month or finish my next poetry manuscript. I may do those things, but I’m so tired of the whole new-year-new-me mentality.
The world is broken. People are suffering. Toadies and sycophants and wannabe oligarchs are calling the shots in the United States. When this happened in France a few centuries ago, those French “leaders” ended up losing their heads. Literally. I’m not saying we need to start publicly guillotining elected officials. What I’m saying is that SOMETHING has to change. In a big way.
I miss simpler times. Easier times. When my family was all alive and together and cared for each other. When our leaders respected the U.S. Constitution, and the President of the United States knew he was simply a tenant of the White House for four or eight years. When bigots and racists were afraid to crawl out from under their rocks. When common decency and compassion were the guiding principles of being a living, breathing citizen of this planet.
That’s my New Year’s message tonight. I want everyone to remember that we’re all in this together. What hurts one person, hurts everyone. No more rambling, incoherent, hate-filled monologues. If you call yourself a Christian, then start behaving like Jesus Christ—with love and compassion and generosity. If you’re a poet, use your words to uplift and enlighten. To put it simply: don’t be an asshole in 2026.
Saint Marty does have a new poem for you tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
Begin by freewriting a list of memorable events of the past year: places you traveled, people you met, books you read, etc. Then, take the true and earnest statements about these events, and embellish and exaggerate them until they are funny. Example: on your trip to Florida you may have actually seen two people wielding metal detectors, but in your poem, the entire coastline will be covered with folks out there metal detecting. Create a poem that both preserves some of the highlights of your year and leaves you (and hopefully your reader) smiling.
House for Sale
by: Martin Achatz
Plenty of potential. Roof installed 5 years
ago, along with laminate flooring. New furnace,
water heater. Refrigerator, washer/dryer
included. Mornings, house fills with scent
of brewing coffee & Old Spice. TV randomly
plays episodes of Gunsmoke and Bonanza.
Occasional Doris Day songs heard in middle
of night in kitchen, usually “Secret Love”
or “Que Sera, Sera,” along with rattling
pots and air simmering with spaghetti
sauce. Attached 2-car garage. Stand-alone
storage shed, perfect for garden implements,
lawnmower, snowblower. Green peppers,
eggplants, zucchini grow well in backyard.
From 7:12 a.m. to 7:27 a.m. daily, living
room swells with sound of breaths, as if
someone is drowning in the rising sunlight.
❤️
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