yield

There are no events but thoughts and the heart’s hard turning,
the heart’s slow learning where to love and whom.
The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times.

—Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm (1977)

A new year begins tomorrow.
Just like that, we must adapt—

devour what remains.
Extract what feels like success.

This annual closure is a practice of trust.
What seems true: the future is in motion

and its relationship to being in witness
demands us whole because this year’s event horizon

finds us waiting at a finish line yielding
a parade of roses and rapacious bombs.

I will remember the good and honest times—
a trick of light, slants of perception.

Let’s release these whispered translations
and bury the vanishing year.