North Idaho Alliance: Women of Impact Leadership Roundtable New Year thoughts

Here we are again. Heading into another year in this, the 21st Century. It’s been quite a century so far starting with the Y2K scare, moving into rapid growth of social media, information sharing, and technology that can navigate our world — weather we like it or not. And because of this, it has been labeled the age of information technology. Historians forecast this the most pivotal turning points for humans on planet Earth.

Honestly, I think we all might agree, it’s a bit overwhelming, so this month the Women of Impact would like to slow down and share poems out of “old fashion books” from women poets about this date of the calendar — Jan. 1. Our new year. May it be a happy one!

 The Year by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 

What can be said in New Year rhymes,

That’s not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,

We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,

We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,

We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,

We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,

And that’s the burden of the year.

Promise By Jackie Kay

Remember, the time of year

when the future appears

like a blank sheet of paper

a clean calendar, a new chance.

On thick white snow

You vow fresh footprints

then watch them go

with the wind’s hearty gust.

Fill your glass. Here’s tae us. Promises

made to be broken, made to last.

Burning the Old Year by Naomi Shihab Nye

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.   

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,   

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,   

lists of vegetables, partial poems.   

Orange swirling flame of days,   

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,   

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.   

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,   

only the things I didn’t do   

crackle after the blazing dies.

The New Year By Anon

I am the little New Year, ho, ho ! 

Here I come tripping it over the snow.

Shaking my bells with a merry din —

So open your doors and let me in!

Presents I bring for each and all —

Big folks, little folks, short and tall;

Each one from me a treasure may win —

So open your doors and let me in!

Some shall have silver and some shall have gold,

Some shall have new clothes and some shall have old;

Some shall have brass and some shall have tin — 

So open your doors and let me in!

Some shall have water and some shall have milk,

Some shall have satin and some shall have silk!

But each from me a present may win — 

So open your doors and let me in!

• • •

Marilee Wallace, IOM, president/CEO of the North Idaho Alliance Women of Impact.

The Women of Impact Leadership Roundtable meets once a month for a nine-month series, and we base our monthly agenda on the word IMPACTED. To see the lineup of our monthly topics and to get details or view additional programs NIA is offering to Impact women in our region, please visit our registration page at www.thenialliance.com or join https://www.facebook.com/groups/972216519983800.