A ritual for the year about to turn:
We drive off, ceremonious, under a dark
star-pricked and clear. A tinsel-curl of moon

fades in floodlight over the lots. We park
close in, the early wisps of a winter storm
driving the ceremony. Under the dark

of doubt and terrible headlines, let us perform
to oboe sounds, in icelights, a mime of hope.
The midweek lull, false calm before the storm,

and the mild Mozart soothe. Can this light-scape
lay the old ghosts of children's fallen faces?
Can icelights, oboes, dissipate the fog-shape

of errors past, or futures with hollow voices
that bark, saluting, Nothing to report—?
Well, let us hope. Let us stroll with lifted faces

and cleave to sound and ceremony and art,
in rituals for a year about to turn
dark corners. Space is flinging itself apart
star-pricked and clear, with a tinsel-curl of moon.