Last night was the first time I celebrated the New Year alone. My spouse was out working, and I wasn’t able to get a PCR test in time to be with friends. A lot of us keep experiencing new holidays in isolation. I spent the night drawing pictures and listening to music too loud, as a commitment to doing more of the same in 2022.
The Rilke poem above had been banging around my head since I’d been home, and I drew it out with a wish for better days for you and me. I love the way it holds past, present and future together all in the same gentle grip.
Below is the text.
I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.
Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another life that’s wide and timeless.
So I am sometimes like a tree
rustling over a grave
and making real the dream
of the one its living roots embrace:
a dream once lost
among sorrows and songs.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
grandgather 