For starting this new year, 2024, I have a poem, which I finished early last March. It’s about endings and beginnings, about the end of my 2022 & start of 2023. That New Year’s Eve surely ranks as the very worst of my life, as I got some nasty 2nd degree burns, which took a while to recover from. Close friends and people I’ve seen in person were aware of the burns, but if you’re not one of those, this is probably the first time you’re hearing about it. No need for sympathies at this point, I’m all recovered. (Well, the scars will remain, and I’ll never have hair growing on some of those spots, but hey, whatever, such is life.) And by now, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that I would make esoteric and spiritual mediations on the incident and turn them into a poem.
The poem might make it sound like it went worse than it did. Or better than it did. For instance, I don’t really say much about pain in this draft of it. But there was pain. Not so much from the burns, or even the skin graft surgery, but from when my leg and foot were swollen. Anyways, pain from the burns ceased to be an issue back in February 2023.
I’m happy to say that 2024 has started much, much better. I mean, well, obviously, it would be difficult to do worse than the worst New Year’s Eve of my life. Though this New Year’s Eve was a very quiet and relaxed one (and would probably look boring to an observer), it was what I needed. And the first weeks of the new year have gone exceedingly well.
Like last month’s poem “What is Absinthe?” this one will also go in my forthcoming poetry collection. Here’s the poem, enjoy!
Fire, Ashes, and Rebirth
The phoenix is famous for its fiery death,
for when burnt to ashes, it is reborn anew.
’Tis a great talent, and good to have,
but imagine how painful that method must be.
A mite more than others, such misery I know
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