January 5, 2016

an open letter to a new year

Who knows what your pages have to say, how the thickness of their stock
will take the beating of bad weather, which narratives will spill on and
which will come full stop, what characters will wave their arms for attention,
if the spine will hold for the long haul. And yet, I don't want to get too far ahead of you,
rush along the liminal fog banks where it looks like nothing much
is happening, or squeeze past the close quarters of the stuffier chapters, or fix
my sights only on the glossy extravagance of words when it's silence or touch
that will bring the surer understanding. So here we are, you and I, not quite
beginning so much as we are...extending. You, with your binding cracked free,
and I, like clockwork, sniffing for poetry.