Closing the Loop on the Year

“Closing the Loop of the Year,” first published in The Hudson Review

Poem written by Wendy Drexler, used with permission from the author

Snow clings to shingles. I riffle December
pages of my calendar—coffee-stained days,
bills paid, to-dos and past dues,

the late tracery of time spent, nearly
forgotten. I peel
the cellophane from the new calendar, turn

the blank pages. I want another year, oh yes.
And another after that. I want
tenacity like the dogwood outside my window,

preparing to stay, bare branches huddled hard
against the side of the house—
the one shoot that races straight up

from the middle of the crown—
brown umbel with its parasol of stalks,
each stalk capped with a pink bud

ready to be struck into white stars,
on whose account, by May,
the whole branch will tremble.