New Year Reflections - Lora Lee

Lora Lee - poet

New Year Reflections - Lora Lee

The older I get, the less interested I am in resolutions that demand reinvention. I am more drawn to continuance. To staying awake. To noticing what still asks for my attention.

In the coming year, I hope my writing keeps moving closer to the ordinary places where meaning hides. Kitchen tables. Empty benches. The small mercies we overlook because they arrive without fanfare. I want to write in a way that listens first. Writing, for me, is not about proving anything. It is about bearing witness. About telling the truth gently enough that it can be heard.

Creatively, I hope to remain curious. To follow questions instead of answers. To let wonder interrupt certainty. To trust that even when words feel scarce, something is still forming beneath the surface.

As for life, my hope is simple. To love more deliberately. To forgive faster. To leave fewer things unsaid. I want to keep making room for joy, especially the quiet kind that shows up unannounced and stays just long enough to change the day.

If the new year offers anything, I hope it offers us patience with ourselves and each other. That feels like enough to begin.

Solitude and Silence.

No hand reaches to wake me

from sleep’s slow shoreline.

Morning moves through the room

like something half-remembered,

a visitor of light, setting small offerings on the ledges of my thoughts.

I listen for a name in it,

for the note that might reveal

whether this is freedom’s hymn

or solitude learning to speak aloud.

Dusk gathers its own congregation.

My shadow walks beside only itself,

yet the road feels watched

by eyes I cannot see.

Each step tastes of iron and rain,

a first sip of some unsweetened wine.

Is this liberty, raw and clear,

or the aftertaste of questions

no one stayed to answer?

Silence builds a sanctuary around me,

stone by stone, breath by breath.

Choices rise like candles

along an unseen aisle,

each small flame opening a way inward.

Sometimes the glow feels like solace,

sometimes like the outline

of a missing presence,

a chair pulled close to the table

where no one sits.

Above, the night studies my life.

Stars spell out a quiet script,

tiny syllables of fire

written across a listening sky.

My freedom glimmers among them,

a thin, steady radiance,

while peace keeps watch at the edge of everything,

wrapped in a robe of endless dark.

Here I stand, a single figure

inside a field of invisible company.

Stillness reveals its hidden color.

Ache closes its eyes….and becomes prayer.

Somewhere beneath the mask of freedom…

a softer face is turning toward me, waiting for the moment

I recognize it as my own.

Lora Lee - USA

12/13/2024

HAPPY NEW YEAR