Most new years are white, blank Januarys –
a chance for change and new beginning.
On this year’s horizon, instead of blanketing snowclouds,
dark thunderheads. Harbingers of the flood.
The river will fill. And the lakes, and the ocean.
We’re so used to building dams against the rising tides
that when they break and we are caught in
history’s currents we rifle for footing
and try to hold back the waters with our hands
instead of remembering that we can swim.
Everything will not survive.
But some things will.
Everyone will not see the future.
But most of us will
and we will have to dream it.
And under the snow
and rain
and water
and mud
and silt
and shit
and hate
and winds
and dead earth
and fires of change
there is, under all that, a new year,
where small things will happen
small troubles, and small joys,
small enough for a human to hold,
and above all of that, at night, while
our worried brains are calmed,
the fixed stars will spin
as they always have.