New Year Resolve

-





by May Sarton



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.


please note: photo by by Carol J. Phipps

Comments

  1. SilverGullsDecember 31, 2012 at 4:41 PM

    Happy New Year Tidings. Always a pleasure to drop by. Lovely poem. You have the knack of finding them.

    ReplyDelete
  2. C.M. JacksonJanuary 1, 2013 at 8:54 AM

    Happy new year and thank you for the lovely Poem...I had forgetten how much I love May Sarton

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mary EllenJanuary 1, 2013 at 2:36 PM

    How lovely - and how helpful this Sarton poem is. Thanks kindly. Best wishes for your own busy life to have restorative pools of silence.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The BugJanuary 4, 2013 at 10:13 AM

    It really is now or not... Happy new year!

    ReplyDelete
  5. LydiaJanuary 4, 2013 at 6:21 PM

    Perfect. I needed this. Will post this poem at Clutterquake soon. Many thanks.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Hey, thanks for your thoughts and your time:>)

Popular posts from this blog

A Year with EB White

-
Image
"You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that."----- from Charlotte's Web I am a soul always drawn and fascinated by the idea of " A Year of...". A Year of Rumi. A Year of Calvin and Hobbes. A year cooking with Julia Child. A project that provides guidance for the year and a ruler we can measure inward growth in the course of our circle around the sun. One year, after an early marriage and an unsurprising--except to me--early divorce, I came across a book by Sue Hubbell titled A Country Year. I didn't plan for it to take a year to read, but it did. I only read it at night before I went t
Read more

The Poet Goes to Indiana by Mary Oliver

-
Image
I'll tell you a half-dozen things that happened to me in Indiana when I went that far west to teach. You tell me if it was worth it. I lived in the country with my dog— part of the bargain of coming. And there was a pond with fish from, I think, China. I felt them sometimes against my feet. Also, they crept out of the pond, along its edges, to eat the grass. I'm not lying. And I saw coyotes, two of them, at dawn, running over the seemingly unenclosed fields. And once a deer, but a buck, thick-necked, leaped into the road just-oh, I mean just, in front of my car— and we both made it home safe. And once the blacksmith came to care for the four horses, or the three horses that belonged to the owner of the house, and I bargained with him, if I could catch the fourth, he, too, would have hooves trimmed for the Indiana winter, and apples did it, and a rope over the neck did it, so I won something wonderful; and there was, one morning, an owl flying, oh pale angel, into the hay loft o
Read more

Goldfinches by Mary Oliver

-
Image
Some goldfinches were having a melodious argument at the edge of a puddle. The birds wanted to bathe, or perhaps just to dip their heads and look at themselves, and they were having trouble with who should be first, and so on. So they discussed it while I stood in the distance, listening. Perhaps in Tibet, in the old holy places, they also have such fragile bells. Or are these birds really just that, bells come to us--come to this road in America--let us bow our heads and remember now how we used to do it, say a prayer. Meanwhile the birds bathe and splash and have a good time. Then they fly off, their dark wings opening from their bright, yellow bodies; their tiny feet, all washed, clasping the air.
Read more