A "welcoming Something Dance" for the new year

It's been a beautiful holiday so far. Now my partner and I are heading up the coast to celebrate the New Year with his family. I've been thinking about time, as many of us do at the new year. For me it's more pronounced this year, as it's been a time of enormous change for me. When I quit drinking, I didn't really believe the folks who talked about getting sober as the beginning of a process, but it does seem to be what's going on here. Sometimes these days I'm not sure where I'm headed with it. (Except staying sober, which I'm pretty darn certain about!) But I do know what I need to do is to be open to the world, and to myself, whatever that looks like. Primrose wrote a wonderful post on this subject yesterday. And the other day, when I was organizing a bunch of paperwork, (it's not all fun and games and tea and cookies here on my days off!) I came across a poem by Charles Wright that I'd tucked aside a few years ago and then forgotten, and I thought I'd share that in lieu of my own words.

Wishing you peace and joy in the new year. And dancing!

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Bedtime Story

The generator hums like a distant ding an sich.  
It's early evening, and time, like the dog it is,  
                                                                                 is hungry for food,  
And will be fed, don't doubt it, will be fed, my small one.  
The forest begins to gather its silences in.  
The meadow regroups and hunkers down  
                                                                            for its cleft feet.  

Something is wringing the rag of sunlight  
                                                                  inexorably out and hanging.  
Something is making the reeds bend and cover their heads.  
Something is licking the shadows up,  
And stringing the blank spaces along, filling them in.  
Something is inching its way into our hearts,  
                              scratching its blue nails against the wall there.  

Should we let it in?  
                                       Should we greet it as it deserves,  
Hands on our ears, mouths open?  
Or should we bring it a chair to sit on, and offer it meat?  
Should we turn on the radio,  
                                                     should we clap our hands and dance  
The Something Dance, the welcoming Something Dance?  
                               I think we should, love, I think we should.

-by Charles Wright (from his book Scar Tissue)