A poem written during my hibernation this winter. I was sat at my allotment, where the garden is definitely in it’s winter slumber, reflecting on how at odds I felt with the ‘New Year’ energy. How can it be a new year when everything is still so cold and every inch of my being is still firmly in it’s winter cocoon?
For me, since aligning my life more with the seasons, I find myself coming alive again in spring. My ‘new year’ begins when the leaves burst into being on trees and the first flowers are tentatively emerging.
Wintering and honouring the slowness of this season have become central to the rhythms of my life. I notice myself becoming disconnected and burnt out when I try to keep up with the frantic January rush.
Do you feel the same?
An Invitation Declined
They say it’s time to call in a new year.
Quick! Rush! Declutter!
A flurry of change and drive and surging forward with
the battle cry on the crisp air –
“New Year! New me! New NOW!”
On the stroke of midnight, ‘just being’ is no longer enough.
Be better, be newer, be sharper, be smaller, be hustlers, be different.
A constant stream of content screaming:
“New year! New me! New NOW!”
I feel like an alien, an other-worlder.
My bones are slow like snails
in my cocoon with hibernating beings.
Small tendrils of dreams for springtime
only just starting to appear from the frost.
Same me. Slow me. Wintering me.
I feel at odds with man-made time.
The budding of the leaves on trees
and the eruption of the first spring flowers make more sense to me.
My drive to hibernate, to drift and dream and ebb
is stronger than the calendar on the wall.
Same me, slow me, Wintering me.
The number I write at the end of the Year has changed.
But I am not ready to emerge.
I tug my blanket of hibernation across my soft animal body.
Quietly turning down your invitation. Call me when the spring arrives.
Same me. Slow me. Wintering me.
Lizzie Elliot-Klein
SeaWyld 