‘Round, Round we go -
Another year over
And a new one just begun;
A time of renewal,
Yet another bite at the apple!
We cycle our personal calendars from December back to January,
Feeling younger and refreshed.
The Earth rotates, carries us out of its shadow -
Not just the dawn of a new day but a new year:
The Earth revolves anew around the Sun.
Circles nested within circles.
How deep does it go?
Arbitrarily, we mark the passage of time:
Reflect,
Take stock,
Look forward and celebrate the renewing of the renewal
Which we pretend will never end.
‘Tis not a true renewing though,
As it is predicated on the old;
The new year has the old one embedded within it.
I will not be getting any younger.
The planet will not sweep out an identical
Path through space and time.
The Sun is lighter, our ellipse precessed, space expanded and cooled:
Nothing is exactly the same
Our personal and Universal entropy climbs
No matter how we mark the time.
Nonetheless, we celebrate the completion of a lap.
The idea of renewal,
Marking the moment,
They are not valid but they are necessary.
Invalid validness keeps me going on,
Keeps me spinning round,
The cognitive up and at ‘em my small brain needs…
So, three cheers for another lap, world of mine.
The changes are slow enough and my vision poor enough
I can tell myself all is possible once again.
We are all riding the tide of entropy
Sometime between too low (boringly ordered)
And too high (boring in its disorder).
Like a catapulted sleeper
Who awaken near the apex of his flight,
Enjoying the heights of the ride
Having missed the ascent
And falling asleep before the descent.
What a glorious time to be alive,
What a view our big brains have earned
Examining those Keplerian ellipses we ride.
The clockwork of finite nested circles that is the universe
Spins not forever -
It had a beginning and will someday end,
But what glorious turning for now!
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| AI art generated from lines of this poem |
