December 31, 2024: "New Year's Day," Two Birthdays, Grace and Blessings

The last post of the Year of Billy Collins on this blog.

It has been a heck of a year--full of all kinds of joys and sorrows, celebrations and struggles.  But, when you think about it, that pretty much describes every day of every week of every month of every year.  On this transitional night--not quite old, not quite new--I choose to reflect on all the grace and blessings of the past 366 days (it was a leap year), 

For the final time, a poem by Billy Collins . . . 

New Year's Day

by: Billy Collins

Everyone has two birthdays
according to the English essayist Charles Lamb,
the day you were born and New Year’s Day—

a droll observation to mull over
as I wait for the tea water to boil in a kitchen,

which is being transformed by the morning light
into one of those brilliant rooms of Matisse.
“No one ever regarded the First of January
with indifference,” writes Lamb,

for unlike Groundhog Day
or the feast of the Annunciation,
this one marks nothing but the passage of time,
I realized, as I lowered a tin diving bell
of tea leaves into a little body of roiling water.

I admit to regarding my own birthday
as the joyous anniversary of my existence
probably because I was, and remain
to this cold day in late December, an only child.

And as an only child--
a tea-sipping, toast-nibbling only child
in a colorful room this morning--
I would welcome an extra birthday,
one more opportunity to stop what we are doing
for a moment and reflect on my being here on earth.

And one more birthday might be a consolation
to us all for having to face a death-day, too,
an X in a square
in some kitchen calendar of the future,

the day when each of us is thrown off the train of time
by a burly, heartless conductor
as it roars through the months and years,

party hats, candles, confetti, and horoscopes
billowing up in the turbulent storm of its wake.

Like Collins, I wouldn't mind celebrating two birthdays in a year.  I like the hubbub of confetti and horns and cheering and singing and decadent foods.  Yes, this last month or so has been an uphill climb for me, but I know that 2024 brought a lot of gifts (graces?  blessings?), as well.

Here are some of the biggies:  

• My daughter being accepted into Central Michigan University's medical school
• My son being accepted in Middle College at Northern Michigan University.
• The publication of my Bigfoot book after 25 years of working on it.
• My wife being physically and mentally healthy and happy.
• Another successful year of teaching at the university.
• The health and happiness of all my family.
• The love and support of all my close friends.
• A pretty cool solar eclipse.  
• All my work at the library--so much joy.
• My puppy recovering from being attacked by another dog.  She walks faster than me.

So, you see, I'm a really lucky man.  I reflect on all these presents in my life and know that, even in the darkest times of life, there is always light and love and joy right around the corner.

Saint Marty wishes you all a Happy Birthday New Year!

January 1: New Year's Day, Joseph Brodsky, "1 January 1965"

New Year's Day.  My sister is cooking prime rib.  I'm supplying some New York cheesecake.  The day is bright and clear.  I can almost see tomorrow from my window.  Everything seems possible today.

I know that I've shared this poem before, but it drives the cobwebs out of the corners for me.  It fills me strangely with gratitude.

Saint Marty hopes everyone feels the same today.  Gratitude abounding.

1 January 1965

by:  Joseph Brodsky

The Wise Men will unlearn your name.

Above your head no star will flame.

One weary sound will be the same—

the hoarse roar of the gale.

The shadows fall from your tired eyes

as your lone bedside candle dies,

for here the calendar breeds nights

till stores of candles fail.

What prompts this melancholy key?

A long familiar melody.

It sounds again. So let it be.

Let it sound from this night.

Let it sound in my hour of  death—

as gratefulness of eyes and lips

for that which sometimes makes us lift

our gaze to the far sky.

You glare in silence at the wall.

Your stocking gapes: no gifts at all.

It's clear that you are now too old

to trust in good Saint Nick;

that it's too late for miracles.

—But suddenly, lifting your eyes

to heaven's light, you realize:

your life is a sheer gift.

January 2: An Oracle, Miracles, Kim Addonizio, "New Year's Day," Confessions of Saint Marty

When I slide under a barbed-wire fence, cross a field, and run over a sycamore trunk felled across the water, I'm on a little island shaped like a tear in the middle of Tinker Creek.  On one side of the creek is a steep forested bank; the water is swift and deep on that side of the island.  On the other side is the level field I walked through next to the steers' pasture; the water between the field and the island is shallow and sluggish.  In summer's low water, flags and bulrushes grow along a series of shallow pools cooled by the lazy current.  Water striders patrol the surface film, crayfish hump along the silt bottom eating filth, frogs shout and glare, and shiners and small bream hide among roots from the sulky green heron's eye.  I come to this island every month of the year.  I walk around it, stopping and staring, or I straddle the sycamore log over the creek, curling my legs out of the water in winter, trying to read.  Today I sit on dry grass at the end of the island by the slower side of the creek.  I'm drawn to this spot.  I come to it as to an oracle; I return to it as a man years later will seek out the battlefield where he lost a leg or an arm.

Annie Dillard is an observer.  She sees with a scientist's gaze and a poet's wonder.  Tinker Creek is filled with tiny miracles of nature.  Water striders and crayfish and shiners.  Sun striking water.  Clouds boiling on windless days.  It's a place that makes Dillard stop and reflect.  A New Year's Day made manifest in stone and soil and light and creation.  Every moment about strangeness and newness and oldness.

Yes, I am still in the meditative state of New Year's Eve/Day.  Thinking about the past and wondering about the future.  I am trying to approach 2016 with excitement and hope.  There are blessings headed my way.  I just need to be more aware of them.  I need to be like Annie Dillard in a way.  No, I don't mean I need to live a cabin in the woods and go for hikes three times a day.  I just need to keep my eyes open.  See the miracles.

I'm not much for New Year's resolutions.  Resolutions are promises easily broken, lost after a week or two of reality.  So, I am not calling my miracle-seeking a resolution.  It's a change in attitude or state of mind.  A shift from darkness to light.  I feel much more comfortable with that description.  It seems more doable.  Sort of like saying that I'm going to cut back on drinking Diet Mountain Dew without setting any clear or measurable goal.

And I need to remember that, even in the dark times of life, there are still stars in the heavens, moonlight in the trees.  Loss, I guess, can be a way of making room for blessings.  Pain can be a reminder of how precious life and health and happiness are.  That's what Tinker Creek is all about, I think.

Saint Marty has a New Year's poem for you on this second day of January, 2016.  Find a miracle in your life today.

New Year's Day

by:  Kim Addonizio

The rain this morning falls   

on the last of the snow

and will wash it away. I can smell   

the grass again, and the torn leaves

being eased down into the mud.   

The few loves I’ve been allowed

to keep are still sleeping

on the West Coast. Here in Virginia

I walk across the fields with only   

a few young cows for company.

Big-boned and shy,

they are like girls I remember

from junior high, who never   

spoke, who kept their heads

lowered and their arms crossed against   

their new breasts. Those girls

are nearly forty now. Like me,   

they must sometimes stand

at a window late at night, looking out   

on a silent backyard, at one

rusting lawn chair and the sheer walls   

of other people’s houses.

They must lie down some afternoons   

and cry hard for whoever used

to make them happiest,   

and wonder how their lives

have carried them

this far without ever once

explaining anything. I don’t know   

why I’m walking out here

with my coat darkening

and my boots sinking in, coming up

with a mild sucking sound   

I like to hear. I don’t care

where those girls are now.   

Whatever they’ve made of it

they can have. Today I want   

to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk

a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,   

and lift my face to it.

Confessions of Saint Marty

January 2: New Year's Resolution, Kim Addonizio, "New Year's Day"

My sister is still at the hospital as far as I know.  It is 10 p.m.  This night has been fairly quiet.  A good time to reflect on...life.  The start of a new year always makes me a little melancholy.  It has a lot to do with things that I haven't accomplished, things that I wish to accomplish, and the wide chasm in between.

I didn't really make any New Year's resolutions.  I made a New Year's plan.  I am going to seriously work on a book that's been brewing in my head for several years.  I'm going to consciously carve out time every day to write.  I mean, besides my blog posts.

So I'm not going to get all depressing and dark.  I'm going to leave that up to Kim Addonizio tonight.

Saint Marty knows 2015 is going to be a better year.

New Year's Day

by:  Kim Addonizio

The rain this morning falls 

on the last of the snow

and will wash it away. I can smell   

the grass again, and the torn leaves

being eased down into the mud.   

The few loves I’ve been allowed

to keep are still sleeping

on the West Coast. Here in Virginia

I walk across the fields with only   

a few young cows for company.

Big-boned and shy,

they are like girls I remember

from junior high, who never   

spoke, who kept their heads

lowered and their arms crossed against   

their new breasts. Those girls

are nearly forty now. Like me,   

they must sometimes stand

at a window late at night, looking out   

on a silent backyard, at one

rusting lawn chair and the sheer walls   

of other people’s houses.

They must lie down some afternoons   

and cry hard for whoever used

to make them happiest,   

and wonder how their lives

have carried them

this far without ever once

explaining anything. I don’t know   

why I’m walking out here

with my coat darkening

and my boots sinking in, coming up

with a mild sucking sound   

I like to hear. I don’t care

where those girls are now.   

Whatever they’ve made of it

they can have. Today I want   

to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk

a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,   

and lift my face to it.

I'm dreaming...