Letters swallow themselves in seconds. <br />Notes friends tied to the doorknob, <br />transparent scarlet paper, <br />sizzle like moth wings, <br />marry the air. <br /> <br />So much of any year is flammable, <br />lists of vegetables, partial poems. <br />Orange swirling flame of days, <br />so little is a stone. <br /> <br />Where there was something and suddenly isn’t, <br />an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space. <br />I begin again with the smallest numbers. <br /> <br />Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves, <br />only the things I didn’t do <br />crackle after the blazing dies.<br /><br />Naomi Shihab Nye<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/burning-the-old-year/
