In order to view this poem with the line breaks the author intended, we suggest reading it on a computer screen or in landscape orientation on your phone or tablet.

New Year

Though I can’t summon his name,
I know him and see he’s scrolling
his memory bank, trying to place me.
Bare, limbs, cold wind, scraps of snow,
breath of car exhaust hovers.

I will listen more this year, I wrote,
I will notice more. It’s cold.
One of us needs to speak, so I offer
”we have something in common,
we’ve both lost our wives.”

His face softens to a river breaking through ice.
”How’s it going,” I add.
Almost four years.
Whenever I think it’s over, it comes back.
I’m glad it’s January now.

Muscular oaks on this street bulge
and twist as if dancing.
We’re both comfortable with this silence.
I hold him tenderly in my heart,
but what I see in my mind’s eye is a message

painted on a rock wall in Spain
saying YOU ARE ALIVE,
and what I hear is a phrase
from a poem, “my life was never
so precious to me as now.”

Ted, yes, I recall his name is Ted.

—
John Krumberger has published three full volumes of poetry and a prize-winning chapbook. He retired at the end of 2023 after a long career as a psychologist and psychotherapist. In addition to a PhD in psychology from the University of Minnesota, he received an MFA in Poetry from New England College.

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