Twelfth Night marks the end of Christmas. The decorations are all packed away and confined to the attic. The tree is out the back waiting to be recycled and the old year is finally and definitively over. So there is no excuse not to write that new year’s poem, except that it is proving difficult.

So here it is . . . ?

This year hardly seems new at all. We are still in the pandemic. Last year it was the Delta variant. This year it is Omicron. The government then, as now, have been slow to take the necessary precautionary measures. For two years we have been told it is our duty to save the NHS, except for a week in December when we have to save Christmas.

Christmas can save itself, and the NHS does not need saving from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It needs saving from this government, as do we all. But that is the sort of thing I post on Critical Mass. Penumbrage is supposed to be more personal. Never mind. Sometimes the personal and the political merge, so there you go.

We Three Kings

Here are three short poems for the new year. Are they like the three kings who by tradition arrive in Bethlehem on Twelfth Night? Or are they the gifts that the Magi bring? Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh: the life temporal, the life spiritual and the death that ends them both. Not exactly the message of the Gospels, it is more an atheist’s creed, my creed.

The first poem marks the realisation that I am coming to the end of my sixties and that my new puppy may easily outlive me. (But not if he keeps pooping on the carpet!)

The second is a backward glance at the old year, which, despite my grumpy tone, did have its positives: my daughter’s successful cancer treatment, rediscovering that I could write, (Big shout out to Maggie’s Creatives in Manchester) finding new hope for the world from fellow socialists on the internet. And we did get a puppy! ‘We’ is the operative word here. My wife and I are still together after forty two years.

The third is just me saying, ‘Forget the past. This is a new year. Go for it!’ and that is what we do, not just every year, but every day. This is life. It’s the only one we’ve got. So why not go for it?

The poems

I
In this, my summer of '69,
I will watch my new dog grow.
And so I come to measure out
The time that's left in puppy years.

II 
I've wrung all I can from this old rag 
And pegged it out to dry.
It may be shrunk, the stains washed in,
But I've a brand new flag to fly.

III 
Oh, happy new! Unlike the old,
Its dreams forgotten, hopes untold.
So now, without a daunt or doubt,
Bring on the new and cast that clout!

Welcome to 2022.