With the new year well and truly in play, I’m still preoccupied with resolutions and ideas of fresh starts. I love January, as mentioned earlier this month, because it feels like the only point in the year when time might just stand still. Of course when you’re counting down the days until payday that’s not always preferable but for me it always feels like a blessing in disguise.
It’s a time for self-reflection, and after the buzz of Christmas and New Year you need that moment of quiet stillness. Life may insist on whizzing by throughout the rest of the year but January can be held in place for a brief while.
Ask Me by William Stafford
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.