new year dinner



an embarrassment of food swinging from

your wrists, you exit the car

there are still cold nights!

          and still a great deal of abundance
the moon is a comfortable wedge

                              sat primly at the join of years

you wave in time with the minute hand

                    the street a drowsy copperhead

                    breathing warm, sodium breaths
all of it:          the food, the stars, the owls

the keys and bags and car doors

conversations, highway lanes

          all of it a triumph, all of it the same

          damn thing that happens every year
most of the time there is more to do

          and far less reason to do it

most of the time the doom hangs heavy

          and you are made dispassionate

          in the shadow of the new year
but for a minute, you went back home

and there and on the road back, staring

          into a fresh and living night

you came alive again