The year of...?

We wait to see what the new year brings.
Impatiently sometimes, with paper hats
kazoo's, confetti, but when it comes, finally,
the old year having suddenly vanished from sight,

our blushed faces, corporately, go white
and our breath streams out, long and thin,
for that one stunning moment when the new year is
walking in. In that confusing hubbub that arises,
in that No Year, when the old has slunk
like the snake that he was out the back door
and the new year is creating an uproar in the entryway,
there is a blank second, a moment to turn
to someone standing next to you
and say something, a word, any word
free from the giant weight of time.
Squeek it out just then - don't fumble
for the right word, don't go looking for a pen
or camera to immortalize

but look right in their eyes and say
something, perhaps only a name for the new year,
(a name could keep him, if spoken in that
eternal moment, from being your master,
could teach you the inward holiness required
to keep a foot on the neck of time)

and when you do, a music will begin
between the two of you, and spin its light and airy
way out into the crowds of paper-hatted folk
blaring horns and breaking glass.

They will not know, and neither will you
except for a sudden resonating hum
that will thrum inside your mouth,
in every word you say from that day
until the next Dec 31st.

Whay am I getting at?
There should be a thirst
inside your souls throat
from a moment like this
and words like this
and music
and hope
like this.

Between Birds & I

No longer does a spirit extend
between myself and the roadside
birds. Before, flames of light
licked out from a hawk's
sudden form, and blue music
gripped me with fresh hands
when a heron stood upright
on a swell of grass within sight
of my hunched position at the wheel.
That was the way it was.
Sparrows flitting in liquid mass
were charged with the pathos
of a rainbow, or a lover.

Now, I still see, but
the record hand pulls the wrong way
clicking over the cocentric circles outward,
not making the infinite music of rhythm with
the world's wise, but instead the dry notch
of foot on plank, of conscious eyes clicking
in unmoistened sockets, walking towards an ocean
of silence.