I posted this poem on 12.30.2013, then did a substantial re-write.

Better? Less obscure?

At Year’s End

I had one task, to testify, to bear witness
to the love of life and the itch toward death.
In my hesitant quest for words
and their order, there there must be something
I have overlooked. I still don’t understand.

The tree beyond this window is threadbare,
Tattered by the wind and rain.
But when the sun was high
and bright at the end of June,
it wore a great coat of summer leaves.

Our faces are deeply lined now, hair
variegated gray.
We heave from the chair with a groan.
We stand and talk while dogs dance
around us in sparks of happiness.

Then why do we turn to the east in December
and putting the last of the light to our backs,
why do we lie down and sleep?

At Year’s End by Kyle Kimberlin is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.