without ever once explaining anything

Then again, this Kim Addonizio poem could convince even one with the strongest resolve to give it all up. I found this wonderful January poem via enhabiten, and I've been savouring its flavours all week.

New Year’s Day
BY KIM ADDONIZIO

The rain this morning falls
on the last of the snow

and will wash it away. I can smell
the grass again, and the torn leaves

being eased down into the mud.
The few loves I’ve been allowed

to keep are still sleeping
on the West Coast. Here in Virginia

I walk across the fields with only
a few young cows for company.

Big-boned and shy,
they are like girls I remember

from junior high, who never
spoke, who kept their heads

lowered and their arms crossed against
their new breasts. Those girls

are nearly forty now. Like me,
they must sometimes stand

at a window late at night, looking out
on a silent backyard, at one

rusting lawn chair and the sheer walls
of other people’s houses.

They must lie down some afternoons
and cry hard for whoever used

to make them happiest,
and wonder how their lives

have carried them
this far without ever once

explaining anything. I don’t know
why I’m walking out here

with my coat darkening
and my boots sinking in, coming up

with a mild sucking sound
I like to hear. I don’t care

where those girls are now.
Whatever they’ve made of it

they can have. Today I want
to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk
a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,
and lift my face to it.

resolve.

So, let's consider December "captured," and move on shall we? The whole thing went swimmingly until our house guests arrived. I had every intention of blogging my way beyond the Mayan apocalypse and into 2013, but intentions met real life and real life won.

I'm hoping to do better.

I've never been much for resolutions, and for a while there I had some kind of a well-thought out or at least heavily-emoted argument against New Year's resolutions, but I guess even my resolve not to resolve wore thin.

This year, I have one very small, very achievable goal (okay, one that I'm willing to name publicly and actively pursue — I'd obviously love to be healthy, organized & punctual):

 in 2013, I'm going to read more fiction.

So far, the pile on my nightstand reads thusly:

Ann Packer's The Dive from Clausen's Pier (started last night and so far: too much description of what people are wearing),

Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (thrifted and paid for by the pound),

Wendell Berry's That Distant Land (I was so spoiled at Christmas. Also, I just read my first Port William novel this fall, and I am IN) and

Alice Munro's latest, Dear Love (another very much loved Christmas gift. Also, is it possible to read Alice Munro in the summer? I'd never even try).