IN 2008 "MAY YOU..."

It's a delight to be included again in Sheila Murphy's annual snailmailings of lovely poems inaugurating the new year. This year she sent a letter-pressed broadside featuring the poem below, which I/she/we are delighted to share with Moi Peeps:

In the Year 2008

May you:

Forget to have been beautiful
             amid an earthen innocence.
Lodge discovery
             between repeat signs.
Afford some window light
             upon the acrobatic integers.
Remove soft hesitation
             from your breath.
Claim rapture
             within captive lineage.
Subtract type casting
             from the psyche.
Appreciate new winter
             as so many staves of rest.
Translate linear geology
             to nest depth.
Bow before iced branches
             leaving shadows on unbroken snow.
Extrapolate from future saplings
             particles of present tense.
Pluck from estrangement
             justice and satiety.
Commit to being young
             beyond your eyesight and your skin.
Initiate soul's semaphore
             inviting reciprocity.
Project a single flower
             upon a blood-scarred field.
Capitulate to the impending free-for-all
             of infinite compassion.

[Posted by permission of the author.]