To The New Year

    It is now five days into the New Year.  Some of us watched "the ball drop" in Times Square in New York City. Others  sang songs, toasted each other with champagne or shared a midnight kiss. The  poet below has another idea. He welcomes the New Year  with the first ray of light, not at midnight.  He listens for a lovely voice, then hears a dove's song.

To the New Year

By W. S. Merwin

With what stillness at last
you appear in the valley
your first sunlight reaching down
to touch the tips of a few
high leaves that do not stir
as though they had not noticed
and did not know you at all
then the voice of a dove calls
from far away in itself
to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you
here and now whether or not
anyone hears it this is
where we have come with our age
our knowledge such as it is
and our hopes such as they are
invisible before us
untouched and still possible

The poem itself is a wonderful description of a new year’s dawn bringing new hope.The change that we hope for stirs within each of us. It is not  found in the loud, midnight swaggering, but in the stillness and hush of the morning.
   Victor Hugo said:

“To love beauty is to see light."

Image of Love and Beauty

 What do you hope for this year. I hope to live in peace and to  love beauty. I hope the sound that awakens me will be as sweet as the call of a dove far away . I hope  love will touch the tips of our hair (our  high leaves) and find its way  to reach inside all of our hearts.