A New Year Mourning

10...

and when diaphragms brace to exhale

forcing second to second through body's cavern

voices steeplechase through fleeting moments

reaching for a finish line sure to move again

9...

and when those two black hands, so familiar, converge

praying towards a rimmed sky

salute the occasion at hand and pause

doing the will of Chronos, of God, of eternity

8...

and when shouts echo into deep, unyielding space

twenty-four iterations on a tired ritual song

a chorus rippling like stone's skip through yesterday

careening towards what has been and could be

7...

and when bottles pregnant and buckling sing hollow and hollow

explode electric into air brimming with meaning

cover and adorn drunken hours past

with the gift of forgetting

6...

and when tiny silver screens flicker en masse to display

burgeoning crowds filling city expanses, huddled

joining in unison to watch the unspectacular

a sphere slowly finding its way back to earth

5...

and when glasses are raised, gesturing to the unknown

the cannon fire of existence marked booms across

bursting rooms, countries unto themselves

honoring the treaty of life and death

4...

and when launched light gives birth again and again

bears the fruit of happening

ricochets across evening's backdrop

painting the landscape with color and smoke

3...

and when hands do what hands do

waltz fingers together, marrying to each other if only briefly

to make a new thing, a holy thing

a thing to hold one and another

2...

and when lips do what lips do

outstretch and search with mission, yearning

collide and part with some other being

to mark and savor a de novo instance

...

and when time does what does what time does

befuddles us in her trickery, promising a better day

than what will come in this, a new year

mourning

Photo: New Year's Eve in Times Square, Dec. 31, 1938.

NY Daily News/Getty Images