First Thoughts

First thoughts – 1994 and 2021

The wind, the rain

a wavering leaf

caught up

let down

motion

life

New Year

passing of time

motion.

 No fireworks last night

unless meant to celebrate

the passing of a year – infausto –

inauspicious, fatal

as no year before.

 Although in other times and places

For other people

The year was no less inauspicious

for human beings never have

nor will they stop

eliminating others and their creations.

 I look out the window

And rain comes down in

Intermittent wind-blown sheets

Rivulets on the road

Umbrellas useless

A hat that stays on

Has to be jammed down tight

To defy the wind.

Chill wind

moves round my face

does its best to infiltrate my coat,

lifts noiselessly away the warmth,

asserts its winter nature.

Isn’t there an Aesop’s fable

Won by the wind, or was it

By the sun?

 Low leaden clouds

hang overhead

edges bleeding

into the white open eye

of the horizon.

Wind, rain, a tremulous branch.

Motion

life and death

promise and reality

of a new year.

And in the afternoon – the sun –

the wind has died – not just died down,

but died.

And gone with it is that awareness

of being acutely, vulnerably, alive.