"New Year's"

New Year's

By Dana Gioia

Let other mornings honor the miraculous.Eternity has festivals enough.This is the feast of our mortality,The most mundane and human holiday.On other days we misinterpret time,Pretending that we live the present moment.But can this blur, this smudgy in-between,This tiny fissure where the future dripsInto the past, this flyspeck we call nowBe our true habitat? The present isThe leaky palm of water that we skimFrom the swift, silent river slipping by.The new year always brings us what we wantSimply by bringing us along—to seeA calendar with every day uncrossed,A field of snow without a single footprint.

--

Dana Gioia, “New Year’s” from book 99 Poems: New & Selected, Copyright © 2016 by Dana Gioia. Reprinted with the permission of the author. DanaGioia.com