The time has come
To stop allowing the clutter
To clutter my mind
Like dirty snow,
Shove it off and find
Clear time, clear water.
Time for a change,
Let silence in like a cat
Who has sat at my door
Neither wild nor strange
Hoping for food from my store
And shivering on the mat.
Let silence in.
She will rarely speak or mew,
She will sleep on my bed
And all I have ever been
Either false or true
Will live again in my head.
For it is now or not
As old age silts the stream,
To shove away the clutter,
To untie every knot,
To take the time to dream,
To come back to still water.

“New Year Resolve”
written by May Sarton, from Collected Poems, 1930-1993

____________________________________________________

Thank you to David Kanigan for sharing May Sarton’s , “New Year Resolve,” which, according to his blog post, Kanigan discovered back in 2012, on another blog entitled,  Waiting for the Karma Truck, who’s author says she found it on NPR’s Writer’s Almanac … and on and on.

As seekers, we pass collections of words,
like light with form,
like precious contraband,
from palm to palm,
sipping carefully,
then gulping desperately,
as we discover the taste of truth.

In these words, I see my reflection as “old age silts in the stream,”
and ask, can I stop here?
Can I stop to pull off the sticky, infectious urgencies that threaten to smother me?
Can I finally release what I grip so tightly in my shaking hand —
those small and powerful things which envelop me in shadow?
Can I bring in the quiet, which sits “shivering” and starving
and begging,
“on the mat” just outside my door?

Happy New Year to me,
and to you, my friends.
God help us all, as we strive to live alive.
May we leap that we might fly.