Tag Archives: new year

Onward to 2026

I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year. I’m not going to list an inventory of accomplishments (or lack thereof) from 2025 or state any intended resolutions for 2026.

Instead, I will take the day to rest up after shoveling snow in the wake of a massive storm that walloped Central New York.

And I will also share a poem I recently read in The Essential Poems by Jim Harrison.

It seems fitting for New Year’s Eve, as does one of my previous poems about the essence of time (below). I love the line about “my imperishable stupidity,” since I can relate.

Calendar

Back in the blue chair in front of the green studio
another year has passed, or so they say, but calendars lie.
They’re a kind of cosmic business machine like
their cousin clocks but break down at inopportune times.
Fifty years ago I learned to jump off the calendar
but I kept getting drawn back on for reasons
of greed and my imperishable stupidity.
Of late I’ve escaped those fatal squares
with their razor-sharp numbers for longer and longer.
I had to become the moving water I already am,
falling back into the human shape in order
not to frighten my children, grandchildren, dogs and friends.
Our old cat doesn’t care. He laps the water where my face used to be.

Harrison, Jim. Jim Harrison: The Essential Poems. Edited by Joseph Bednarik, Copper Canyon Press, 2019.

Clock on the Wall

Time is an entity unconcerned
With our hopes and aspirations.
It marches on unimpeded,
Multiplying seconds to minutes
And making centuries.
It is unswayed by emotions
And unaffected by our wishes and ambitions.
It is heartless in its swiftness—
A thief and a robber,
And life’s only true survivor.
It is unmerciful in its lack of discretion,
And unstoppable in its one-way direction.
It does not yield, it never ends and
It does not ask us our permission.
And yet, we still ask it for more.

Dreaming of Lemon Trees: Selected Poems by Francis DiClemente (Finishing Line Press, 2019)

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Here’s to nurturing goals in the year ahead

Last week I was looking through some composition books that I use for jotting down writing exercises, journal entries, story ideas and other scraps of information. In leafing through the pages I found an entry dated August 3, 2012. It’s about an encounter I had over the summer, but I will present it here as a brief essay because I think the story has some relevance as we get ready to catalog another calendar year.

A woman was sitting with her legs crossed on a wooden bench in a wide hallway near the entrance to a lecture hall in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications on the campus of Syracuse University.

Her back was to me as I came down the stairs from my office on the second floor of Newhouse One. I turned in her direction and walked toward the men’s room at the other end of the hallway.

A hallway in Newhouse Three in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

I noticed she was in her early twenties and I surmised she was a graduate student. She had long straight brown hair, was wearing a gray sweater and had a cell phone cupped to her ear.

As I strode past her I overheard her say, “I love it. I really do. But I have all these other goals that need to be nurtured. They really need to be nurtured.”

I wondered who was on the other end of the phone. I also wanted to know what goals she was talking about.

Were they career goals, family goals, personal goals, artistic goals, romantic goals, financial goals? What did this young woman want from her life and what was standing in her way? Lack of time, lack of money, lack of opportunity, lack of patience, lack of support? Or was she on the cusp of seeing her ambitions realized?

But I also thought, can goals really be nurtured? Can we massage them and bend them to our will?

And what’s the difference between goals and dreams? Goals and hopes? I guess a goal implies making a plan, setting forth on a path toward a destination, toward accomplishing something tangible. There’s more effort involved than just making a wish and hoping for the best.

In reading my notes, I wanted to relive the incident; instead of going down the hallway to the bathroom, I would have liked to stop and talk to the woman and try to get some answers to my questions.

And since this is just a notebook exercise, I took the liberty of transcribing a fictitious conversation with her.

“What do you mean by nurturing goals?” I asked the woman.

“What?”

“What are you talking about when you say you have all these goals that need to be nurtured?”

“Were you listening to me?”

“Yes. I couldn’t help it. I was walking to the men’s room.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“OK, I understand. And I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m interested.”

“In what?”

“In you.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m curious to know if people can really nurture goals. And since you mentioned it, I’d like to know what goals you’re talking about.”

“I already told you, that’s none of your business. Now leave me alone, please.”

“All right. But I had to ask. The curiosity was killing me.”

Even in a fictional world the woman revealed nothing to me, so her story must remain a mystery.

I don’t know if she will make good on her plans for success. I don’t know if she will go beyond nurturing her goals to seeing them come to fruition.

But I will make a wish as we usher in 2013. I wish her good luck on her journey of self-discovery and I hope all of her goals will be fulfilled in the new year.

I also wonder if the woman was a plant by God, an angel placed there to make me listen to the ticking clock, to awaken me from the routine of that summer workday and remind me that time is elapsing. And if I want to do anything with my life I can’t wait for tomorrow.

So the incident makes me reflect on my own life goals. I ask myself, am I doing all I can to nurture them? Am I expending the effort necessary to achieve them? I guess I have a way to go in that department.

But I will take my cue from the woman sitting on a bench and talking on a cell phone. In 2013 I will do my best to nurture my personal and professional goals. I hope you will do the same, and I wish you the best of luck as you go at it.

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