A New Year's Day poem

January 1

by Jamie Parsley

after Octavio Paz

The new year has flung open
all the doors! It is speaking to us in
a special language only we understand.
Only last night—
all night long—
you spoke to me.
You said,
Tomorrow
we—you and I—
will read all the signs we’ve been given.
We will draw out the land
in the snow
and us in it. We will plan out
our future together
on the page
of the day. We will plan it
on a page
white as fresh snow.
Tomorrow, we—
you and I—
will between us
invent reality and the world
in which it exists.

I wake up late.
For a fraction of a second
I feel what our ancestors felt,
standing there on the lip of eternity,
waiting for the sky
to reveal a future
they longed to know.

But for us, it is not so easy.
For us, a new year
has come to us.
It has filled
this room
and, for just a moment,
I feel as though I could almost touch it
and tame it
and make it ours.

But it is
not any different than yesterday
or last year.
The streets are still empty,
covered with blizzard snow.
Thick snow covers each rooftop.
And the silence the snow demands
fills the early morning.

And here, you are
beside me.
Has this day invented you?
Have you allowed this day
to invent you?

I will not let it invent me.
And I’m not certain
you’re actually here at all.
You are actually from some other day.
And yet, here you are,
quiet as snow
asleep on a pillow
luxurious as a cloud.
But not really.
This moment invents
snow-covered houses,
snow-clogged streets
trees weight down by snow
and you, sleeping beside me.

Open your eyes. Let’s get up and
walk together in this fresh snow,
before the plows come
and disturb everything. Let’s walk
through the hours of this day
and all that it invents for us.
Let’s walk together,
looking to all the world
as if we are something else entirely.
Let us wear this day
and this whole new year on our faces
and let it conjugate itself
in our very lives.
Who knows? maybe it is us
who will fling wide
the doors of this new year?
And if we do it, we
will step into this year
unafraid of
whatever it may hold for us.
January 1, 2011