The poem reflects on the absence of traditional New Year symbols and fleeting moments of connection, using vivid imagery like a car swan-diving and shattered glass to evoke impermanence and emotional depth.
A poem Larry Towell / Magnum No chrome without winter, no New Year, no white baldachin
strung out above the altar, wood painted white, carved angels singing
for twelve hours straight in that choir, no hours, no altar,
no slick white glyphs of blades on ice, stunts of red fireworks, or corrugated heart
projected bright on the screen, no twin votives by which you held me and said,
I want to feel this way all of the time. No all of the time. Just brief suspensions,
sharp lung of breath, my blue car swan-diving through an exit off the highway, like last year,
what scraped off the windshield to the asphalt was indistinguishable from glass, in its act of shattering,
in the pressure of discernment, of your experience, the buttons of your shirt I undo
to scatter on the ground; they lodge in the floorboards like seeds.
