New Year Reflections - JT Caine

JT Caine - poet

New Year Reflections - JT Caine

As the new year approaches, I know what I want to change. I must remind myself that I am not so fixed in my ways, that I cannot still push myself into new shapes. If there is any single strand woven through the stories of everyone who ever managed to realize an artistic dream, it is that inspiration can only open a door. It is the walking through it, every day, that makes it possible to sow a garden. 

I have spent too much time, over the past few years, looking out of open doors and marvelling at the beautyand the possibility outside. I have ventured out, now and again, and watered what wild berries and tubers I could find. But I have lacked the discipline to grow my garden. 

In the new year, there will be days I will plow furrows and grow row upon row of some delightful thing that grows. Other days, I will be lucky to put 3 seeds into the soil. But writing every day, I will keep walking out the door to build something that I can call my own.

Renewal

Do we no longer run after the one who

throws himself into the dying light

Are his hands unworthy of our grip

Filthy from the gears of toil

and wrung dry with existential dread

His eyes, foreign pools of an oil we cannot

combust for just a little more artificial light

Reflectionless - lest we see ourselves too clearly

While our own little fires flicker out

Is this how leprosy has evolved in the modern age

This fear that despair is contagious

That the depths are some private shameful place

How do I tell you that a perpetual spring is not sustainable

And that seasons of renewal can feel just like burial

That the funeral for the light has no end date

It is a wake that keeps no calendar at all

But it will end, nonetheless

Not with any fanfare

No parade or celebrations

When you first find that you can

reach out and touch the day again

It won't be to the breathtaking colors of the dawn

There's a fair chance it will be to clouds

And maybe even a shower

They say that a plant grows

better when we speak to it

And it's not just the carbon

There's something deeper

than chemistry connecting us

What if we were the sort that believed that

What if we saw one another, not as compost,

Heaped in various stages of rot,

But as the pluripotent seed within

And what then if it sprouted

to the sound of encouragement

From a voice that rang strangely familiar

Like some song from long ago

That sang our hearts into a rhythm

That sang our bodies from the earth

Unfurling into the light

It has a wholly different timbre

than the voice that does not hibernate

The one that casts aspersions

like an arsonist with a box of matches

Remember that they crave your

jealousy to excuse their own

For they fear the dark places

The isolation of shadows

which are all their making

The dread of turning the scouring pads inward

The sloughing off of all the pretense built from sand

They want your courage

But you won't hear that from their lips

Hear it now from mine

Let not the darkness overwhelm you, gentle soul

Can you hear us yet

The chorus who sing to one another through the loam

Songs of renewal

And the coming of the thaw

Listen close

What you carry is no small torch of brilliant green

Please believe that fundamental truth

with a faith that will fit snugly into a tiny seed

For that very belief is the catalyst

behind everything that has ever grown

And everything that has ever survived a winter

.

JT Caine © 12/20/2025

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