Phipps Library and Preservation

Currently over 18,000 digitized old and rare books, scholarly papers and periodicals curated and shared (via flash drive upon request) by Jesse A. Phipps. Subject matter is primarily philosophy, esoterica and science.

Burning the Old Year

BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

Letters swallow themselves in seconds. 
Notes friends tied to the doorknob, 
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable, 
lists of vegetables, partial poems. 
Orange swirling flame of days, 
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t, 
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space. 
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves, 
only the things I didn’t do 
crackle after the blazing dies.

Source: Naomi Shihab Nye, “Burning the Old Year” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995).

Happy New Year from the Phipps Family!