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.

As a poet, I have compose a couplet or sussed out a stanza only to ultimately abandon it convinced I'm unable to find the missing aspect that will complete it. As a human, I have left moments and deeds unresolved and untitled.

Resolutions proclaimed for a New Year are mere parlor games, half-hearted mutterings to play along with others.

While I cannot 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 find it. 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