A Night When Two Years Touch
… excerpt from a letter that reads like a blessing …
No matter whether we choose to observe — or not to observe — the turning of the year, something unmistakeable stirs in every heart at this time. There is an insistent awareness of time’s passage & the fleeting nature of life — a summing up of joys & sorrows, triumphs & trials.
In the best of times, New Year’s Day feels like stepping out into the dewy freshness of a spring dawn. This year, it is quite a challenge to trust that “stepping out” will not mean “falling into” a space, a void. Every one of us has undergone particular sorrows and hard times in the year which is about to end. Yet whatever we mourn or question — individually or collectively as a family, a nation, a world — there is still a stubborn and indisputable air of promise in the turning of the year.
On New Year’s Eve, I always reread the following words, a quintessential appreciation of this moment — excerpted from a letter written by Stephen Harvard (1948-1988) and saved by Dorothy Healy, a beloved Portland librarian. It embodies the mystery and promise inherent in a seasonal shift felt by all living creatures. It reminds me of everything there is to celebrate.
New Year’s Fragment — by Stephen Harvard
It is the night when two years touch.
The northern sky curves up like a cauldron where the world begins.
The shining dipper turns there in the sky, twice as tall as Cabot Mountain.
A boy of twelve steps out for air – a boy disguised as a graying man.
He sees the old familiar constellation – a ladle brimming full of what will be.
He asks, wordlessly, that the dipper swing deep through the arc of the year to come.
He asks for pouring out.
He asks that everyone he knows be inundated with the fine things
of the sky. Let those with loaded woodsheds and high bright trails
have blizzard after blizzard! Let the dipper pour out mist
for returning geese and ospreys; let the dipper pour out
for the gardeners and farmers and sawyers and bitterns and ducks.
Pour out a fine March wind to clear the air.
Pour out high warm thermals for the redtails of June;
pour out the ice cold mountain streams.
Ripen the berries and corn and tomatoes;
open the morning-glory by the kitchen door.
Ripen the children and dogs under baking August.
Ripen the lives of everyone who lives.
Pour out apples and fireflys;
pour out wave after wave of maple leaves.
Turn, tall dipper, and pour out cold November rain;
turn again and cover the hills with snow.
Drain the year to its fullest; and then (he asks),
turn out the dipper one more time.
A year from now, on the night when two years touch,
when the year is empty, dip again.
Pour out this peace and silence and quiet and space;
pour out this good close dark;
pour out the single seedpearl star, Polaris.
My apologies for the “subscribe” button appearing twice. Nothing I do will allow me to delete one of them! Anyway … subscribing is free & always will be. And comments are eagerly read & appreciated.
What a wonderful poem! It is definitely deserving to be reread each year, to set the dipper in motion and think of all the sweet things in life.
Really lovely, Clyde, thank you.