"an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space"
letting go as a ritual
Vintage tulip, ukiyo e artwork, 1917 edition of Seiyô SÔKA ZUFU by Tanigami Kônan
Burning the Old Year
by Naomi Shihab Nye
Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
by beloved Naomi Shihab Nye, published in her 1994 collection, Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Eighth Mountain Press)
Creative Invitation
Look for the little things that exist between the narrative you’ve written about the last year and the year you actually lived. Look for the tiny little differences between your day yesterday and your story about yesterday. Is there anything that can be lifted up, that should be held to the light? Bury these details in the yard and water them to see what grows.