With New Year

I sit reading poems of Chinese sages with their paintings of mountains and mist from a thousand years ago. Outside, snow falls like it did then, and inside, I muse on it and the ways of the world as they did too. In between, the sights and sounds of today wash over me like in a dream in a place and as a person I am always only just getting to know never quite sure I can accept or trust what they have to offer; security and comfort, while snow continues to fall amid mountains cloaked in mist. (1/4/2021, first published in my 5th book of poems and stories, EXTRACTING THE ESSENCE, 2021)