[Poem-a-Week] New Year's Day by Cynthia White

Dawn, the moon’s waning crescent. A hard frost
crusts car doors and windows. I slow, 
admire the glitter. Now the quiet is split
by shivering cries, coyotes, or turkeys—
how strange to confuse them. Strange
that the owl, in her ardor,
should sound like a chimpanzee. 
Astray, I double back, then pause—
stuck, or poised. Once,
I rode a sleeping car from Paris 
to Barcelona. In the midnight middle 
of some fields, a stop. I lined up in the cold 
with the others, uncomprehending until 
I reached a man at a table pouring steamy 
sweet coffee into little cups. Con leche, 
I managed. And sensed, in that moment,
the cusp of a life full-grown, gleaming
and sharp. What is it pricks me 
this January hour? Not lost, not lost, 
goes the voice in my head. 

*previously published in Southern Poetry Review

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Cynthia White’s poems have appeared in Adroit, Massachusetts Review, ZYZZYVA, Tahoma Literary Review and Plume among others. Her work can be found in numerous anthologies, including “Grabbed: Poets & Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment & Healing.” She was a finalist for Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Prize and the winner of the Julia Darling Memorial Prize from Kallisto Gaia Press. She lives in Santa Cruz, California.

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