Our New Year

Well, looking back on it, 2008 was a year of dichotomy. There were many moments of once-in-a-lifetime greatness met with a counterbalancing number of truly awful things. Both margins were ridden something fierce, in retrospect. I'm heading into 2009 with the same sensation one has after a particularly grueling theme-park ride: exhaustion tempered with a lingering mixture of exhilaration, delight, and terror.

Right now, I guess I'm too dazed to take any sort of stab at what the coming year will hold in store for us. But, in light all that's taking place, good and bad, I've been thinking about this poem quite a bit. It encapsulates my hopes for the New Year well enough. My apologies if I've already sent it out to any of you:

Sometimes
by Sheenagh Pugh

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.