A Poem for Years End

Every year, my tradition with this email series is to send a poem that I found inspiring and hopeful as a gift for the year ahead. 

This year's poem is An Old Story, by Tracy K. Smith, found on the Poetry Foundation's website.

An Old Story, by Tracy K. Smith

We were made to understand it would be

Terrible. Every small want, every niggling urge,

Every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind. 

Livid, the land, and ravaged, like a rageful 

Dream. The worst in us having taken over 

And broken the rest utterly down. 

                                                                 A long age 

Passed. When at last we knew how little 

Would survive us—how little we had mended 

Or built that was not now lost—something 

Large and old awoke. And then our singing 

Brought on a different manner of weather. 

Then animals long believed gone crept down 

From trees. We took new stock of one another. 

We wept to be reminded of such color. 

Here With You,

Dora