When It's Time to Go

Here's something that found its way to me in 2010:  Kate Rusby’s "Wild Goose."

I wish I had some manner of power and authority over time and space – a temporal agency of sorts.  I’m inspired by a quote from E. M. Forster:  "I will tell you when it's time to go."

In the waning moments of the 2010, I feel as though I’m mentally unburdening myself from the last twelve months and looking ahead to the next dozen with a tabula rasa.

Paul Valery, the French poet (essayist and critic), once remarked that "a poem is never finished, only abandoned." And I know what the man meant. I know it as a poet, having taken the time to compose a couplet or suss out a stanza -- only to finally leave it convinced I'm unable to find the missing aspect that will improve it and complete it. And I know it as a human, having left moments and deeds unresolved and untitled.

For me resolutions proclaimed for a New Year are merely parlor games, half-hearted mutterings to play along with others. I know many who take their New Year’s resolutions seriously, though. And I applaud it. But, I never have the passion or conviction to hold fast to those things. So, I generally dodge them.

But, I think there is something to this sense of resolution. And, while I can't convince myself that there'll be a list of resolutions checked off as the months are torn from the calendar, I can get behind the idea of seeking completion where I can. Instead of a New Year's resolution, rather a quest to resolve.

In the nightmare of the dark

All the dogs of Europe bark,

And the living nations wait,

Each sequestered in its hate

-- W. H. Auden