New Year’s Eve

Traffic drops,

everyone home for New Year’s.

In silence I await the narcissus,

the good fortune of its bloom.

Furled white petals

surround the secret core.

Windowpanes refract the outer light

as water the proud bearing of swans.

The past arrives in procession, year after year,

like this one’s last minute,

its final moment a shadow

passing over everything,

stem and pistil,

my own black hair, my cheek.