Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "so much of any year is flammable"

Welcome back!

I'm inspired by Madness Organica's post (fyi - Madness is an IVC alum) and her link to a wonderful image of a boxer who is adorned with a ribbon that proclaims: Begone sadness and begone woe and come hither my good friend hope.

So, here's one for the new year and the old one, for our sadness and our woe and for our good friend hope, written by poet Naomi Shihab Nye:


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.