If you’d like to treat yourself to a quiet, creative start to the new year, a few spots remain in our January 6-11 morning Write Together session. Each hour begins with a brief reading and a guided prompt, and then we all write together silently in our little Zoom boxes. 10-11 am Central Time, $100. I’d love to see you in the zoom room. Click here for all the details. 

In a tiny room at the top of my house all the memorabilia of my life are stored in boxes and on shelves: copies of all the books I’ve published and not published, dozens of syllabi, thousands of lesson plans, notes and paintings and poems by me and also by my then-tiny children, photos, signed contracts, old mortgages, the spoof newspaper I wrote for my family every year beginning at age 22, and a gigantic tub filled with hundreds and hundreds (thousands?) of cards and letters from friends and family dating back to high school. That’s right: high school.

The past week has been spent opening up the past and seeing where it led. It stuns me how many words I’ve written, how many books and essays and speeches and lectures and poems and stories have poured out of me since age six. The old years blow back like a wind and I’m sifting through endless, endless papers and oh my God, I have tried so hard. That’s almost impossible to say out loud for some reason, so with help from lucille I’ll say it again: I have tried so hard.

i am running into a new year, by lucille clifton 

i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twenty-six and thirty-six
even thirty-six but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me

Click here for more information about lucille clifton, one of my lifelong favorite poets. Today’s poem can be found in Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980.
alisonmcghee.com
Words by Winter, my poetry podcast.