A Poetic Thought Upon the Eve of a New Year

I’m thinking now of how far it always seems there is to go.
Maybe it is too easy that I speak so often 

of late last light on a December day,
of that stubborn grass that somehow still remains green 

behind the broken chain link fence on the corner.
But the need is so great for the way light looks 

as it takes its leave of us. We say
what we can to each other of these things, 

we who are such thieves, stealing first
one breath and then the next. Bach, keep going 

just this slowly, show me the way to believe
that what matters in this world has already happened 

and will go on happening forever.
The way light falls on the last 

of the stricken leaves of the copper beech
at the end of the block is something to behold.