Reflection on a New Year's Eve

Reflection on a New Year’s Eve

 

The space between

this year and next,

like the border

between nations,

is

an arbitrary dotted line—

a pause, a clear-cut demarcation,

decreed and then agreed-upon,

more or less,

and made into

the official

boundary

dividing here and

there,

separating now

from then—

a fabricated

watershed.

 

What makes,

after all,

the earth beneath

one Scotch pine

North Dakota,

and yet birch roots

twenty feet away

across the barren slash

are planted in

Saskatchewan?

What makes this moment

the last of one

elliptical trip

around the sun

and

now

this the first one

of a new circuit,

except for

the whim of

some long-dead

emperor

whose ego needed

stroking?

 

This midnight is

one drop in

the crooked creek

that flowed long before

your grandfather

settled down here

among these hills,

whose waters still

will run long after

I am buried

at the top of another.

 

This moment is

a stillness between

breaths.

 

Nevertheless

within such silence,

such ordinary silence,

as lasts in a

single sweep of

a second hand

one can see the

persistent glow

of a light still

shining stubbornly,

not overcome,

never overcome,

and so, to discover

that the One who

fills all empty

places and who

is born and lives,

dies and rises,

on the margins,

who is unrestrained

by borders,

walls

or fences,

this One is here,

here, now,

eternally present in

the space between

this year and last.