Interim

I have always loved this week between Christmas and New Year's. For me, it is as though time itself takes a holiday, as though the year ends with the culmination of the giddy, frenzied run-up to all the big end-of-year festivities
and then a switch is thrown
and the glare dims
and the relentless jingle-jangle sound shuts off. . .
and then there are days of time-out-of-time, a kind of open, quiet, meditative time that can't be measured as go-go usualness, as the hurly-burly of dailiness.

Instead, there is
stillness and quiet.
Short afternoons
that sidle into the long nights of deep winter.
Stillness and quiet.
A catching of the breath
and an exhalation,
a slow gathering
of anticipation,
and then the new year.

And then, only then,
the clock ticks over
and time starts again.
Already, the night is shorter.

Go well, my friends.