Tuesday poetry: "Day After New Year's"

Today is Jan. 2, and 2024 has begun. This is the first official day. New Year's Day is a warmup -- a blank page, a pause for planning and reflection, a day off school for everyone and off work for many. Now, all the holidays are over, and we get back to business. We may also get around to new business, although that can be notoriously hard. At 6 a.m. on Jan. 1, I got an email from Medium.com proclaiming that over 80% of people abandon New Year's resolutions within the first months of the year and posting a series of links to articles about how to stay on the wagon. In any case, if we've made plans to do things differently in the new year, Jan. 2 is probably the time to begin. This is when we see what the year is really made of.

As I noted the other day, I am not inclined to be political on this blog, even as the year concludes. Biden, Trump, inflation, climate change, Ukraine and Gaza -- any number of pundits for major news outlets can comment on them more astutely than I can. Perhaps 2024 will be as chaotic and bewildering as some of them have predicted, perhaps not. There is still a firm line between the personal and political, however blurred that line may often seem in modern times. So I can say without hesitation that, whatever trepidatious headline may top CNN right now, I am looking forward to 2024. I always look forward to a new year. The Christmas decorations can go back into their boxes for 11 more months, and other festivities can wait. I am excited to be productive again. I have learned to do a job and maintain a home well enough that I don't mind keeping that momentum going. There may be new adventures and surprising revelations along the way as well. A new year is a question mark, and Socrates, of course, believed that true wisdom began with questions.

Of course, a return to business isn't all about mystery. It's also about knowing some definite truths. Today, the Journal of Radical Wonder posted the third poem in my unintended New Year's trilogy -- unintended because they were written years apart and not meant as a continuing story. "Day After New Year's," which first appeared in the collection Angels in Seven in 2016, is about the party officially ending, although I don't view it as a sad poem so much as an honest one. A man who lives in a gated complex feels responsible for his neighbors' safety and casts a stern look at a group of boys who loiter near a woman's garage. They hustle away, and then, a moment later, the man himself becomes the target of suspicion; he's stared too long at a pair of girls who are playing with Legos on their front lawn. The girls race to the door and talk to a shadow that probably belongs to a parent. The man speedwalks away and takes note of the holiday remnants around him: "wreaths left out / for recycling, extensions, unplugged Santas." Personal boundaries solidify again. The new year has arrived, and it feels distinctly like the old one.

Unless any of the world events mentioned above severely disrupts our way of life -- and history has definitely shown that that can happen -- 2024 will probably feel mostly like 2023. We will take the usual precautions and draw the usual lines between generosity and safety. We will flourish optimism over the usual things and temper it when necessary. For that matter, some of us (roughly 20%, according to Medium) may genuinely stick with our resolutions and treat the year as the outrageous gift that it is. We always have the power to be extraordinary. Sometimes, being ordinary is achievement enough. That's how we'll make it to 2025.