Dec. 31, 1959

Polaroid Sputnik Baby on his mother’s lap
in a West Seattle wood-paneled den
with matching floral curtains and couch,
small enough to waltz around the room
in the crook of his father’s flannelled arm.
Such a handsome young couple, Mom and Dad,
willing to bear any burden, pay any price.

Dec. 31, 1969

Buck-toothed Astronaut Boy wearing glasses,
pajamas and plaid robe, it’s early-to-bed after 
The CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite
so my parents can host a New Year’s Eve party.
The next morning we explore the lunar crater
where someone tipsied a chair into the wall,
and that’s the way it is in the Swinging Sixties.

Dec. 31, 1979

Mexico-bound in a month, I can’t sit still
so I leave Ron and Veta to their TV
and walk from Mission Bay to Pacific Beach
where the waves sparkle under a billion stars.
I wish upon the constellation Citius-Altius-Fortius,
certain that the faraway fires of the night
burn brightest for me and me alone.

Dec. 31, 1989

Ceaucescu’s six-days dead, the tanks left Gdansk 
and the Berlin Wall’s been down a month now.
My decade of world conquest is burning out, 
no more flying the flags upside down at midnight,
my cold war’s just begun. I’m like the dark figure 
in the distant doorway of Velasquez’s “Las Meninas” —
it’s hard to say whether I’m coming or going.

Dec. 31, 1999

Is this how it ends, alone with the lights still on,
afraid to step across the chasm because I can’t 
see beyond the blackness to solid ground?
Neil Young is singing, it sent a chill up and down
my spine, when I picked up the telephone and 
heard that he died out on the mainline, but then, 
I’ve got the will to love, like something from above.

Dec. 31, 2009

It’s growing late, time again when the old man
welcomes the baby in the waltz of the new year,
like Dad with me so long ago, and I with my babies
snuggled tight to “Dance Me to the End of Love”
by Leonard Cohen, that great old Father Time
who, if he were here with us right now, would 
raise his silver cup and say a prayer for peace.