A new year poem

Dear Lord, soon the New Year will be on us,

And if I’m surprised, blame it on my slowness

To understand how unyielding is time,

That the clock keeps ticking even if I’m

Asleep or absent or preoccupied.

And by the way, there is no place for pride,

How frail we are, just think of the past weeks,

The rains that ripped apart rivers and creeks,

The floods that sank the cities in the south,

Leaving without breath or bread many a mouth,

And I thought they happened only in stories,

Although in my lifetime there were villages

That were buried in landslides or wiped out

By waves—now the skeptic flaunts his pet doubt

About a truly good and loving God,

But personally I just find it odd

That he should forget there is such as choice,

And that a smoker who loses his voice,

Or his lungs, cannot ascribe his despair

To other than his willful lack of care,

As to the different catastrophes

That visit us, they are the atrophies

Of the physical world, given its limits,

And these, we should add, man himself permits

To happen with a greater devastation

By obstinately harming God’s creation,

As to death, this is but Time’s fruit, the falling

That happens, of which there is no forestalling,

After which something comes—I remember

A time when a typhoon struck like a hammer,

It moved our car a meter from the garage

And kept us inside with our useless courage,

When it was all clear we stepped outside

And what we saw was a world that had died—

The tree in the yard was a skeleton,

The neighbor’s gaze was that of one snake-bitten,

Homes that had lost either their walls or roof

Could offer of life precious little proof,

With a gray sameness, day came after day,

And then on quite an ordinary Sunday,

The morning seemed to me as different,

Still the same, yes, yet of itself a variant,

Because the bare, broken trees had leaflets now,

Green fuzz where before nothing was on the bough,

And roofs that as yet covered just one half

Stretched out to cap the length of one full laugh—

And it is this, the something that comes after,

That, despite past events, should really matter,

And that makes time a striving after grace,

And not mere waiting for what might take place.

Lord, truly the New Year is a source

Of thanks, for you have helped us stay the course.

And since in your time it is always morning

Command the sunlight to stay while we’re singing,

Or else give us the grace to keep the tune

As morning journeys towards afternoon.

Teach us the transitoriness of pain

And the persistency of love again.

Does not the stone that they installed to block

Christ’s tomb have the like roundness of the clock?

Now since it’s almost midnight let me pair

This rambling poem with a little prayer—

May we live every moment in your Word,

I thank and praise you for the New Year, Lord.