For the second year in a row, I celebrated the turning of the year with my neighbors, friends, local community, and our dogs. My little town drops a giant piece of candy at a bonfire event. I was a little late to the pre-party because I was delayed by a poem. Here is my verse of New Year’s Eve; it’s called…
Another Around
by Christina Irene
It’s the day when curiosity
Leaves no one to wonder.
These years when
All the answers are a Google search away.
What song is this? Who wrote it?
When did he die and why did he go
And what do my 532 friends think of him?
Post the answer and if it’s a good song
Perhaps lead a few to wonder
And to the wonder.
I crave wonder
In an era when
Discovering may be a Google search away
But I want to make it.
I seek to make art of every kind.
I yearn to make wonder.
What conversation might I have with primary colors on canvas?
The gray I want to mix and the light I’ll add back in
In shades of gold and sun
That glow of heat we’ve gone around again.
But I need to vacuum.
Last year’s manuscript is unrevised,
My epic from 2007 – revision incomplete –
But I’m back onstage now and
I’ve got to be in my cubicle on Monday.
A hot bath,
A rare pause,
Another round of Tchaikovsky round the turntable.
I’m starting to get the movements down.
This is one of his concertos,
And mine are fragments of verse
Scrawled in a puzzle book
Because I can reach it from where I’m submerged.
I ink letters into the pages
While the numbers printed there
Drown from the dripping from my vibrating fist,
Unsolved and inconsequential.
My brain couldn’t be quiet for song,
For long, unresolved
As in the other room art revolves.
This composition will soon be assembled, sequential
Like I did so often back in my years of term papers and Legos,
Building all the time
With only one room to vacuum.
Now it’s one a year,
Blasted out like a burst of breath held too long,
Submerged too long and close to drowning.
But tomorrow’s a new year
Dustless paper is a directed exhale away.
I happen to have some paint in the cabinet.
According to Google, this piece was composed in 1878,
And Itzhak Perlman played the colorful magic
Nearly a hundred years later.
It spins on my early-90s turntable as 2015 ticks away.
All these times and all this time
Is spread and folded and joined.
I’m starting to get the movements down.
All this time
Fragmented and rendered wholly inconsequential.
I’m getting the movements down.
This one is from concerto in D for violin and orchestra
Spinning about and losing time in its revolution,
A dizzying confluence of heat and art and love and magic,
Me the master of all time,
My time,
All this time.
I’ve got it now
And it’s merely the first movement.
And this is number two.
