A Poem for a Year's Ending
By Michael Parker
Days have flown quickly by like fearsome comets.
Here then gone; here then gone.
My hair is colored moonlight.
My bones are brittle as the limbs
of the trees cracking
from the touch of winter’s deepening freeze.
If I could disclose a secret, it is
suffering has visited me like an old friend.
But if there is anything I know, if there is
something I want to pass on after a year,
it would be this:
the remains of my yesterdays shall be
steps I take in my tomorrows—
emboldened memories, flying aspirations,
lessons administered like sacrament,
perseverance practiced like a holy mantra,
convictions adhered to like Grecian marble,
and hope rooted like mountains.
It is true. What I have lost has broken me,
what I have learned, I do not
want to leave behind.
I aspire to the patience of the moon
through her long cycles,
seeing all our joy
and all our dark history.
I know tomorrow is
the best theory of probability—
a gamble with life, with the Fates
who weave my hours and days
through patterns of the living
and the dead.
I aspire to listen to where the ancients are—
at the windstorm’s end
in that invisible country
now glowing in the widening skies.
I know I am master of the ship
and all strive to maneuver
through the maelstrom
and settle the spirit down
through raging storms.
My hope for the new year—
settle down, wild storms,
settle down.
Copyright © 2021 by Michael Parker. Originally published in the poetry collection, Diving the Spirits in the House of the Hush and Hush, by Michael Parker, published by the Utah State Poetry Society, 2021.
Copyright © Michael Parker | Year Posted 2025
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