New Year’s Poem

Hardly any movement but the wind
shaking banana-shaped brown seedpods
on the locust trees. So many seeds,
so little space to burrow in, so few birds
arriving for the year’s last birdseed,
though tomorrow, the year starts over,
just like magic.

People will pretend to be re-born,
new resolutions, a new page
to turn, wanting so much
to try again, to do it better this time,
having learned from having lived before—
as if life were a lesson and not
a series of moments passing,
a treadmill you mostly forget you’re on,
attracted by what’s passing
that you don’t have
but long for, never
with time enough to do
what you need to
to acquire what seems important.

After a while, you’ve gotten older,
though you remember being one of
the youngest once,
but you can’t stop age from
growing on you. You can tell it’s happening
by how some people start to look at you,
address you, basically disregarding you—
which, of course, can be a benefit:
you regain your anonymity,
are left alone, with more time
to reflect upon what
having lived might mean,
what the purpose was of being given life.

You reminisce more,
try to remember what you were like,
who that person was who lived
inside you then, how he related
to the world—if you could only
meet him somewhere to talk,
if he could only understand
you are himself
grown older—

if he could escape
for even a moment
the moment of his life.

~~~
Joseph Somoza’s 10th poetry collection THE MOMENT OF YOUR LIFE is forthcoming from Grandma Moses Press in Early Spring 2024.

Here is a Somoza poem we published in 2018.