Tomorrow is Christmas Eve.
After that, a week
and the year we named will be done.

We count time carefully now—
months once borrowed from moons,
days adjusted by emperors and popes,
winter trimmed, spring shifted,
January set at the door
to begin again.

Still, the year ends
the same way it always has:
with people leaning closer.

In New York, they will kiss at midnight,
singing Auld Lang Syne,
a song old enough
to remember us
before we remember it.

Here in the South,
under the skirt of the Smokies,
time closes more quietly.

We kept our promises—
a birthday celebrated,
a table shared.
Shrimp, crab, lobster sent from afar.
Seventy-two and seventy-six
sitting where we always sit,
marking forty years of a son’s life
a few days before fifty of our own.

Tomorrow she flies north
to help new life arrive.
The house will learn
what silence sounds like.

I will go alone
to the Christmas Eve service,
for the first time,
holding light carefully
so it does not go out.

We have already exchanged gifts,
already sung our parts—
soprano and tenor—
already said most of what matters.

What remains
is gratitude.

The year closes.
Grace has been sufficient.
We are ready—
not because we are finished,
but because we are held.

Ready for the New Year.

– TaeHun Yoon