Sort of Like New

"Twins" 11/3/2011

November Poem a Day Challenge: Day 3 

Holocene: adjective, Geology: of, relating to, or denoting the present epoch

The Holocene epoch has lasted from about 10,000 years ago to the present day. It covers the period since the ice retreated after the last glaciation and is sometimes regarded as just another interglacial period.

[from the late 19th century: coined in French from HOLO 'whole' + kainos 'new']

Oxford Dictionaries Online

Sometimes old is sort of like new:
hand me down boots,  LPs,
unscratched, the humming sound
of an old song almost forgotten,
a new song conjuring a time
when every one was older
than you & everything full
of the gravity of discovery.

Then there are books whose pages
untouched in years are still crisp,
corners unbent, spine strong.
then something slides into view:
a handwritten note, or the stub
of a plane ticket, the feather of a bird
long done soaring, whatever it is
it has nested there waiting to be found:
beyond old or new.

Finally there are the trees, often ignored,
occasionally climbed, more often cursed
for the clean-up, & each winter iced,
a clue that we are merely between ice-ages,
like the sign on our road that reminds us
that these hills were once & will be glaciers.

I've never been one to get hung up on age:
old was often new to me & as I've aged
it's mattered less & less. Watching small
turn large, praying daily for health, happiness,
& growth, knowing that day stacks on to day,
that winter follows fall, and spring never comes
too soon.

What is time to a tree, to a wall of ice cutting
through a valley or charting a river's course?
What is time to me? What am I to a child
who is everything to me?






[Note: I wrote the poem while listening to the Bon Iver  album Bon Iver. I did not watch the video until afterwards. A very serendipitous find.]