Year’s End

The year is dying, but it does not die.
Its ashes scatter into the roots of days to come,
new shoots rising from the dark compost
to touch a sky just begun.

And in this turning, memory holds
the beauty of all we have been:
every fleeting now, caught like a glimmer of firelight,
woven into the fabric of what remains.

For now, we wait,
winds weaving through the hollow stillness,
carrying whispers of what has been
and the first notes of what will be.