As the new year begins, it can be tempting to limit our scope to the “fresh start” of January and lose sight of the months that follow. But February does follow, then March, and April, and so on. New starts are also cyclical, and as we turn the pages on a calendar, we’re turning both forward and back in time.

The following twelve excerpts are from twelve poems, each representing a moment or occasion within one of the twelve months of our calendar. Poets, it seems, are not very optimistic, and many of the occasional poems in my library are dreary, dark, and even disturbed. But there is always hope within that darkness, a glimmer of light, even on the longest nights surrounding the winter solstice. 

Here, Andy Young reminds us of the community built around a March holiday, despite a personal loss, and Cristin O’Keefe Aptowitcz writes of mid-summer abundance in July. Mona Lisa Saloy sings the sounds of September, and Erika Meitner elegizes a lost loved one alongside the disheartening landscape of December. These poets watch the trees, rivers, and sky, noticing patterns and reminding us how everything is cyclical: each year, each month, each moon. 

We end where we begin, and then we begin again. We’re going to make it.

 

January

Lucille Clifton, “i am running into a new year” (published online at New York State Writers Institute) 

i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair…

 

February

Natasha Trethewey, “Spectrum” (published online at Voetica)

No sun, and the city’s a dull palette
of gray—weathered ships docked at the quay, rats
dozing in the hull, drizzle slicking dark stones
of the streets… 

 

March

Andy Young, “St Joseph’s Day, Star of the Sea” (published in Prairie Schooner)

On St. Joseph's Day
everyone is fed
who wants to be:
plates of spaghetti, a fava bean for luck…

 

April

Cathy Song, “April” (Poetry Foundation)

The moon tonight is closer to us
than it will be
for the rest of the year…

 

May

Kirmen Uribe, “May” (Academy of American Poets)

Look. May has come in.
It’s strewn those blue eyes all over the harbor.
Come, I haven’t had word of you in ages…

 

June

Anne Sexton, “The Truth the Dead Know (Poetry Foundation)

…It is June. I am tired of being brave.

 

July

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowitcz, “July” (Academy of American Poets)

…How good it tasted: so sweet and so tart.
How good it felt: to want something and
pretend you don’t, and to get it anyway.

 

August

Carolyn Hembree, “Nocturne” (Poet’s website)

…August, so long, sweat

your bullets of stars over our shrinking soirée: 
alluvial fluted trunks, swamp iris, lone owl

in the live oak, dropped brass of avenue magnolias, 
this shotgun’s gable rookery, these leftovers…

 

September

Mona Lisa Saloy, “September Evening” (Shared by One Book One New Orleans)

Cicadas symphony at dusk, the
Waning golden light turns
Vanilla as Carlito’s Mom yells
     Bébé, come inside now…

 

October

Louise Glück, “All Hallows” (Poetry Foundation)

Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
sleep in their blue yoke,
the fields having been
picked clean, the sheaves
bound evenly and piled at the roadside
among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises…

 

November

Maggie Dietz, “November” (Poetry Foundation)

…Nothing left but fool's gold in the trees.
Did I love it enough, the full-throttle foliage,
While it lasted? 

 

December

Erika Meitner, “Elegy with Lo-Fi Selfie” (American Literary Review)

I am thinking of you while riding shotgun past the Celanese Plant
at dusk mid-December this sprawling factory on the New River…