This New Year

This New Year,

crumbs will no longer be enough.

You want whole loaves of joy,

feast of exuberance laid out

on the table of each waiting day.

You want awe for the smallest things—

drop of honey lifted off the plate

with a fingertip, that kiss of summer,

and Ball jars of bone broth left

to cool on the back of the stove,

golden and healing. No resolution

could ever live up to the feeling

of just being here, sprinting into

the new year like a child let loose

from parents in the park, running

and running without a destination

into the open arms of the air.


It’s an annual practice for me to write a new year’s poem that tries to capture how I’m looking ahead. I don’t trust much in resolutions, and while I love the practice of choosing a single word to carry forward for the year, one word doesn’t always encompass just where I am or what I intend in the coming months. This poem arrived on a morning when I’d woken at 2am and could not get back to sleep, heavy winds ripping at the house and shaking the windows in their panes. As I sat at my desk sipping my much-needed coffee, Mary Oliver’s well-known words came back to me: “Joy is not made to be a crumb.” Given the difficulty of this past year of upheaval and violence in our world, I’ve come to feel that crumbs of joy, crumbs of peace and rest, will no longer suffice to see us through and help us thrive. We need to invite the whole feast of life to the table if we are to keep our daily access to wonder and awe. This is not a resolution so much as a stretching of the self, a willingness to change and shed the layers we no longer need, the old belief that we should be grateful for what little we are given. It took a long time to hone the final lines of this poem, but from the beginning, that image of a kid who’s broken free of his parents stayed with me. Children often run ahead without needing a destination, without a reason other than the pure thrill of momentum and escape. We all still carry our child selves with us every day—we have simply learned to turn away from them, quiet them, bury their wild impulses and desires. This year, I intend to listen more often to that little boy inside me who wants to play and watch and notice; who wants to break free and sprint into the arms of the open air he knows will hold him.


Invitation for Writing & Reflection: You might write your own New Year’s poem, beginning with the phrase “You want, you want,” and letting your child self speak out loud those hidden desires and buried impulses, those joys that are far more than crumbs.


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