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December 1, 2020

It is the evening of the first day
of the last month of the year –
and it is cold; almost as if the month
wanted us to know that it was here.

A little past twelve a.m. last night
(for once remembering), I flipped
the pages of the calendar that hangs
upon the stout, paint-covered nail –
November’s picture-lights fell back;
in their place, the jewellery of December.

It will get colder as the night goes on,
the water from the tap will chill rather
than wet the fingers and the hand. (I can
almost feel the icy water as I type.) But
I will huddle within my jacket’s wool
and the gooseflesh will be a cosy thrill.

Somewhere outside, not far from here,
others will huddle too – in corners of the
house they work to build; the mongrel strays
will curl up too – let’s hope that there’s a fire.

(I came back home with plumeria in my hand;
fallen flowers, I’d picked them off the ground.
Picking up these flowers has turned routine;
stooping’s become part of my evening rounds.)

My wish is that this December’ll bring
a wealth – of writing, goodness, discipline.
Winter is not the time that earth-trees fruit –
perhaps the mind-tree Bendre sang of will.

‘It is the first day of the last month of the year’ –
this phrase occurred to me sometime before;
I hoped then I could make something of it –
though at the time the cold had not yet bit.

For December 1, 2021

It’ll be a year tomorrow, to the day,
since I wrote ‘December 1, 2020’.
January 1 is New Year’s Day,
but a new year’s starting all the time:
each second’s newer than the last,
each minute’s the future – present – past.

My mind’s somewhat awry today;
it’s been like this for a few days;
is mind enough to mind the mind?
The Gita says ‘to mind the mind is like to bind
the wind’. I do not wish to bind the wind or mind.
Let the mind-kite roam its endless skies;
let me have a hand upon its strings.

The sky is toggling between blue and white;
some blue means sun, all white just cloudy sight,
though the white is not a white that’s loud:
it’s like the quiet of someone when they’re sad.

(‘A good day for coffee and a book’ some think,
slouched behind a computer in their house.
Outside, the labourer bends his back –
he cannot afford thoughts like that –
his form holds up both house and sack.)

I try to think back on the year that’s gone;
I have not kept a diary track.
But days are slippery; like river-stones
they smoothly slide out from the grasp.
Most stones have slid but some remain –
rem(a)inders of the year’s variety …

… and one year older now, I see
that it is discipline begets variety;
and so I pray to things I believe in –
for variety’s richness and sober discipline.