Today, on the last morning of 2023, I woke much earlier than I needed to. And so here I am, in my accustomed couch corner, in my accustomed red bathrobe, with my accustomed white cup and saucer, blinkily pondering time and its formalities.

I turned 59 in the year 2023. My mother broke her hip. My nation was in turmoil. Terrible wars raged around the globe. The seas warmed. Friends suffered. Humans hated each other. I received many rejection letters. I quit my job. Rain destroyed my crops. Trees threatened my home. The furnace broke twice.

On the other hand, strangers sent love letters to me about my work. I saved my poetry conference from death. I watched frozen sea fog hover over an icy bay, guillemots bob in surf, creamy waves crash on granite. I thought hard about poems with friends. I idled and sighed with friends. I ate meals with friends. I giggled and played competitive trash-talking card games and went for long walks alone and not alone. I made the home I wanted to live in. I lived in it with the person I adored. All year long our sons called us on the telephone and texted us goofy photos of their cats and fretted with us about their home repairs or their jobs or the books they were reading, and then they descended on us in a torrent for Thanksgiving.

I am an American, a white woman, an aging woman. I am both educated and working class. I am both rural and urban. I love my country and am perpetually angry at it. I am privileged in ways I recognize and in ways I do not. I know how lucky I am to live in Maine. I read old difficult books but I am not a scholar. I am precise about folding pillowcases and bad at earning money. I remember all of The Owl and the Pussycat and forget where I put the stamps. I am a caretaker of animals and people and plants. I love to be married. I love to be alone. I dislike parsnips and the smell of mice and all things related to Donald Trump. I do not pray, but sometimes I speak to the unknown.

A tender old year to you all.  Honesty is complicated.

Here's a newish poem. I send you much love.

Requiem

 

Dawn Potter

An old gravel road brushes the mountainside. The brush

is a finger, the hill the back of a cool thigh. A wood thrush

croons the narrow clouds, croons dusk over a slow river.

Under leaf and crown, air is the sheen of blue ink, a shiver

 

as sky unfolds. Land swallows mortal space. The gods 

are vast, impatient, but it is evening. Their lowered shields

flash bronze among the pines. Wind swirls; it kisses

curtains, hems, a candle flame. Glints of sun burnish 

 

stones and road. Rapt insects hum. Frogs dive or creak.

A headlight blinds, then fades. The new dark speaks—

a plaintive rustle, impermanent, unbound, yet still the ripe

grass shimmers . . . still the gods tighten their ancient grip.