Monday poetry: "To Rachanee, Laguna Beach, Jan. 1"

Yesterday, the Journal of Radical Wonder posted "Desert Highway, New Year's Eve," one of the bleaker poems in my catalog. I have never ended a year on as despairing a note as the poem's lead character does, but I know that others have. Still, every dark night is followed by a new beginning. That is the cycle that we go through every day, and the new year makes it more decided.

So today's poem -- part of an unintentional trinity, written at different times but set on consecutive days -- takes place on New Year's Day itself. It describes a day years ago (2016, I think; that's when the poem was first published) when my wife and I drove to Laguna Beach to enjoy the sea breeze and the spectacle of unaffordable homes. The poem is not about New Year's resolutions, or really even the lack of them, but simply about gratitude for the nice things in life and acceptance of the things that we can't change. That is the feeling that I have now as I write these words, and the feeling that I have had more or less on every New Year's Day in the past. The start of January is a pause and an intake of breath. Given the prognostications over the last week ("What strange things does 2024 have in store?" a Washington Post headline rhetorically asked), perhaps a deep breath is what we all need.

"To Rachanee, Laguna Beach, Jan. 1" is a love poem. I have always struggled at writing those, perhaps because I get too practical-minded when writing about romance. My inner Pablo Neruda gets cantankerous. Perhaps this poem made it to completion because it's about practical-minded love. I have seldom felt more sincere as a poet than when I wrote:

     We are one day — always a day, not a year — 
     closer to broken, our bodies counting
     toward an end whose only secret is time and place.
     If we are lucky, someday, we will plan our letting go,
     but this year is marked for holding what we can.

I love you, Rachanee. Let's hold as much as we can.

Note: ​When I blogged about "Elegy for a Rhythm Guitarist" last May, I mentioned that the poem first appeared in the Sonora High School literary magazine in 1998. The advisor of that magazine was Marilyn Middleton, who also served as our 12th-grade English teacher, student body advisor, philosophy teacher, prom organizer, and probably several other capacities that I'm forgetting. Ms. Middleton (as she will always be to me) was a genuine force at Sonora High, and on Dec. 29, we received the news that she had passed away at the age of 84.

Tributes are piling up for her online, as befits any teacher who dedicated decades of her life to helping and inspiring young people. I will remember her for her toughness, her warmth, her brilliance as a teacher (among the works she guided us through were Oedipus Rex, Othello, Death of a Salesman, Heart of Darkness, and Chronicle of a Death Foretold) and her support of a young poet who was probably more nervous than she realized. Twenty-six years ago, I was a senior in high school and anticipating what we would learn in her class over the six months to come. That was a good way to start a year.