My 2022 New Year's Poem

 I don't know how long I've been writing a poem on New Year's Day. I do remember that my holiday tradition has its roots in a cardboard leaflet I sent out to friends and contacts probably in the late 1980s. The front cover of the first one read, "Seizing Cretins!" Gradually that morphed into a New Year's Day poem that I sent out through Canada Post, and I eventually switched to email when my recipient list got really long and expensive.

For the seventh year, Conan Tobias of Taddle Creek has asked me to record my poem over the phone and posted it up on the magazine's blog. Here it is.

And if you'd like to read along…

LIFE BEGINS WHEN YOU BEGIN THE BEGUINE

 

for Charles North and Ron Padgett

 

A pancake of snow slides down the side of the building.

It passes floor after floor. A pigeon and a blackbird

stop in midair to watch it and soon get bored.

Someday we will be able to talk on the phone

and see each other like we are on TV. I’m not kidding.

Someday we will each have a real television 

right in our own living room and we will watch

Jack Benny and Edith Piaf circle each other,

masked. Plus there will be ads for cigarettes and bras.

Someday we will have a rectangle with four wheels

that we can move around in. At night, it will sleep

in our “driveway.” Don’t forget to put the top up!

The sidewalk peers up and sees a pancake of snow

approaching. For the first time it experiences suspense.

I pronounce every word as if I have no mouth.

I keep all your letters in the credenza and end

all my letters with a cadenza. O beloved chunk

of geography, please put Ljubljana in my backyard.

We can ride up and down the funicular.

Someday a stack of pages will become attached and

declared a book. As James Tate once said,

“My cuticles are a mess.” Inspired, I wrote

a Broadway musical about cuticles, choreographed

by Busby Berkeley. It closed after just one day

but changed the lives of those who saw it.

Look. Someday we’ll understand each other. Someday

we will learn how to grieve. Someday we’ll

realize what happened. Just sit back and wait 

till the pancake hits the pavement.

 

Stuart Ross

Cobourg, 1 January 2022

Over and out.