So much of any year is flammable.

I hadn’t read this poem carefully since 2011 when I first posted it. Now that I consider it afresh, that last line about Things I Didn’t Do is haunting me again!

BURNING THE OLD YEAR

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye, born 1952, American poet

When when Maria Horvath posted this poem on her blog in 2011, she included the painting below, “Abstracto,” 1935 by Joan Miró

4 thoughts on “So much of any year is flammable.”

I don’t understand abstract art. Youngest son and I were discussing just today what each of us enjoys as art. I gave him his Christmas gift which was a painting of St Martin dividing his cloak (van Dyck) one of several possibilities he’d asked for. There were also 2 abstract paintings which he listed but I chose one I most liked.

Happy New Year.

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I especially like these lines:

“Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.”

If that’s not quintessential autumn, I don’t know what else would do as well.

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only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies

It is, perhaps, these ‘regrets’ that we need to work at the hardest. I try to start each day afresh … that does not prevent the lists of things that still need to be seen to though! My resolve is to contact people more and to deal with those lists slowly and to enjoy tossing the ticked paper away at the end.

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