New Year, at Dawn

Here, in my small city by the sea, the gardens are heaped with snow. Ice glitters on streets and stairs. Against a blue dawn, the the chimneys loom like monoliths. It is a lonely time of day. A lonely time of year.

My sick boy has recovered and flown away. His brother remains in the house, fast asleep, but tomorrow he will fly away as well.

I will stand in the middle of a quiet room and listen to snowmelt tick against the sill.

A new year, a new decade. I have made no resolutions. I read and write and clean and cook and teach and garden and walk and lift and carry and breathe and try to be decent. Vanities erode. Losses loom. I am. You are. We muddle, together and alone.

Here's a poem that no one seems interested in publishing. But I like it still, and so I will offer it to you as a new year's gift . . . a small love song to failure, I suppose you might call it. Or perhaps a reminder to keep opening the wrong door.

To a School Janitor, Fired for Drunkenness  

Dawn Potter 

I miss your grin your cigarettes your
bow-legged grunt up down up
down the stairwells your bucket clank-clanking
 against the charnel walls your mop
hoicked under a meaty arm
your nod your swallowed tears a smear
 of wet linoleum snail-trailing behind you
oh lord why do we shrink
such mountains