A New Year’s Poem

Time, usually so smooth and sleek, by end
Of year’s a brittle thing. Midnight’s caress
Quite snaps its fragile hold and thus distends
A stretch so infinite, so bottomless
We fear we can’t its emptiness address.
We need not though by fear be overrun
For He Who in His holy cleverness
Had with His “Let there be…” all time begun
Was clever more to sanctify it by His Son.

---

Jeffrey Essmann is an essayist and poet living in New York. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, among them Dappled Things, the St. Austin Review, Amethyst Review, Pensive Journal, America Magazine, The Society of Classical Poets, and various venues of the Benedictine monastery with which he is an oblate. He is editor of The Catholic Poetry Room.