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