New Year Prayer
this symmetry inside for everything on the outside
New Year Prayer
This robust heart involved with too many worlds for its own good, this portion of creation constantly trying to make its self singular, this chef at home in the kitchen among a gleam of knives, sommelier among eclectic bottles, sometimes dreaming as a hermit among leaves, drinking the centuries of inherited silence, sometimes the social host opening the doors and lighting the candles, often a father lifting his daughter high up above him and then the husband sheltered by night attempting to talk and talk again, too often now as the years go by the son worrying for a father sitting Atlantic miles away, in a silent remembered parallel. And now this other parallel, this symmetry inside for everything on the outside, the writer in winter at his desk, caught in the light, beneath the window, bringing together the last and the first, the middle and the edge, the near and the far, the troubled lives all calling for the one line and the one life, for creation come together in a central unspoken wish, to be held and made one like a god’s blessing out of nowhere, the pen put down so the open palm, warmed and full, can touch a wound that heals them all. -from River Flow: New & Selected Poems
Written in the midst of overwhelming family responsibilities, amidst the losses of my mother and the ill health of my father, which involved a great deal of exhausting trans Atlantic travel (I wouldn’t change a thing) a young daughter at home and to cap it all, the the loss of one of my closest male friends.
Needless to say healing hands were placed on the wounds through this New Year poem and healing begun through that touch. The power of poetry to transform and heal …
DW
Oh David, so poignant right on time really touched my heart at the core… Thank you.