New Year’s Elegy

 

The new year delivered fresh snow and a promise:

     Things will be different, you’ll see.

Glass in hand, I inspect the mounded silent yard,

     the line of trees in wintry sentinel garb.

About last night: the argument was stupid, I shouldn’t

     have said what I said.

I’ll make amends, come back, you’ll see.

The logs shift, give way; I poke at the embers and

     remember a day, long ago: my kid brother, rickety sleds,

     a stumpy hillside, blood from a gash in his head.

I carried him for what seemed like miles, stood alone in

     the corner as Mother soothed him, all smiles.

Let it go, let it go, what’s done is done.

Things will be different, the year has hardly begun.