To start again each year, looking back at one’s life before moving ahead, requires clarity. To start again while grieving may require more courage than one has. Cohen’s spare poem passes through the disorientation of loss from “the first autumn…without her” to the following summer, season of abundance and decay. —Jody Bolz, Poetry Editor
THE NEW YEAR
It always came
with a cake
she’d made—
a cake made
with honey.
The first autumn
that came with-
out her came
with three cakes
friends had made—
leaden weights I
could not taste.
Days came with
deadening layers
of sameness
day upon day
until summer,
when I stumbled into
a stranger’s garden,
where a honey
bee stung me,
and how sudden
and sweet to be
reminded that
still this world
has wings.
Andrea Cohen’s eighth poetry collection is The Sorrow Apartments (Four Way Books, 2024). A new book, Sugar, will be out in early 2026. Cohen directs the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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One thought on “Poem | The New Year”
inspired by andrea cohen’s three line poem about GOD. she is amazing, Andrea, that is.
“GOD,
I forgive you
for letting
us invent you. ” -Andrea Cohen
Most things fabricated.
Fictional. Simulated.
Very few real.
Fewer as I age. Besides
What is factual evolves
Transitions with time.
No truth is forever.
What masses embraced a century ago
Does not resonate for Gen Z.
When I was young nothing was pretend
Not Wonderland, nor Oz.
I could be Alice. I could be Dorothy.
I was the Little Prince and Pollyanna
And Pippi Longstockings
Contingent upon my inclination.
My beautiful daughter was Eloise at the Plaza
And Madeline in Paris.
Once she could be anyone she wanted to be.
She was better than the original.
She was 3-D, or maybe 4.
I could touch her and know she was real
But now her only authentic self
Lives on the page
Or the iPad screen
In her poems.
I am left alone with myself
And a God I am learning as I near seventy
is merely an invention of His own
or a fiction of ours.
It really doesn’t make a difference.
Creation of God gives us
Melodies.
Community.
Intention.
A point of origin.
A destination.
A means of accepting
Our finitude, our mortality
Confident God, be She
Fantasy or verifiable truth,
will keep our footprints intact
Beyond our corporeal selves.