New Years Eve

 

At night I stood in the winter chill in the moonshadow stark and deep,

And looked at the village soft and warm safely and soundly asleep,

The last year has ended its pleasure and pride and gone is the glory and pain,

And the wind that chills my heart and my soul has settled its ice on my brain.

 

For I wonder what will the new-year bring as we stride through its open gate,

And what will await us and what can we do as we deal with the follies of fate,

Can I alter the pattern of what went before, and walk on a far different road,

Or am I imprisoned by all of my life and bearing a burdensome load.

 

For all our concerns we must take to the path that stretches away to our end,

And if it meanders then all to the good for surprises await round each bend,

For what then is life if the outcome is sure and all is quite certain and set,

No place for emotion and no place for love and no certain home for regret.

 

I have had years of plenty and sat at the feast and tasted the famine as well,

And what would be heaven unless I had walked through the gates of a personal hell,

To have loved and have hated is both meat and drink to the dutiful children of Eve,

And what is elation and what is success to the few who have not had to grieve.   

 

I write and I ponder and ponder and write as the days and the decades slip by,

And as I grow older I prattle and rhyme and offer each reason a lie,

But I still wake in wonder and wait for the light as dreamers have done for an age,

And know I’m the player of fanciful things who struts on this fabulous stage.

 

I was born in the forties and spoke to the old who told then of different days,

Some of them hard crushed by poverties claw buts some of them times to amaze,

They told of the life when Victoria reigned in an empire where suns never set,

They told of the battles they told of the might but never once spoke of regret.

 

But we now must struggle to find a new place in a world that is shrunken and small,

With all of our politics oh so correct and the differences too close to call,

Where reasoned religion is cause to divide and kith and kin bicker and fret,

And it’s better to hide from realities wrath and a man’s bitter strivings forget.

 

But the gates yawning open, the path is so wide with a prospect to beckon me on,

And knowing of nothing I feel I must go where my fathers before me have gone,

Both the curse and the bounty of every new-year are willing me know of their charm,

And the bells that are tolling out time that is past are ringing in joy not alarm.

 

So I walk on in wonder with hope at my side like a pilgrim whose goals are in sight,

And with this companion in whom I must trust I must seek out the truth and the right,

Whatever awaits me I know at the last that something of me will transcend,

And what better epitaph can a man leave than he understood hope as a friend.

 

And should there be tears let them fall like the rain that ends is the sunniest day,

Let me be a potter that fashions new life from the basest and bitterest clay,           

For if I take nothing from what I have learned but a truth that to love is sublime,

Then that will be everything, all that I need, from this year to the ending of time.