🌹🎶 Last Lunar Gasp

A ramble on the last New Moon of the Old Year

Photo by Joshua Bayliss on Unsplash

A moonlit summons in the crisp air -
The startling bite of the breeze
Revealing where life is new and fresh, and
Where it slips away, rotating into shadow.

The wintery dreams of the soul awaken,
Skating across icy lakes, dancing over treetops,
As skydiving squirrels bound branch to branch,
Sending the last clinging leaves spiralling to earth.

Uncomfortable truths bristle in the sparkling light,
Whilst the deep sea dreams of the dark stir.
Resentments surrender to the passing year,
As a sliver of hope smiles in the emerging dawn.

***

Just after I scribbled those lines on the tube, a young mum sat down next to me, her one-year-old boy papoosed in her coat. Freed to sit on her lap, he captivated the whole carriage. Surprisingly relaxed for a London Mum, she encouraged his peekaboo games, his starlike fingers curling around mine. Everyone responded to his innocence, mirroring the little star that still sings inside each of us. After they disembarked, his sleepy head lolling happily in her arms, I clocked the poem written above us.

The enchanting promise of the new - whether the beauty of a newborn or the beginning of a new cycle - captivates imagination. Whilst we take ritualised refuge in the comfort of the familiar, we simultaneously crave the chance to ‘turn over a new leaf’, to ‘start afresh,’ to ‘ring out the changes.’ As the Old Year draws its last breath here in London, the New Moon shoots her Sagittarian arrow toward new adventures. Social media is full of Year in Review Posts, ahead of the explosion of celebratory posts and toasts to 2026. Whilst the Gregorian calendar was imposed on top of the natural lunar cycle, I find the New Year can nonetheless be a potent reflective ritual to leverage change.

As Jack Underwood captures in his poem about his newborn son William, the startling emergence of the new catalyses both our brilliance and our fear. Some days fear bites so fiercely that brilliance is barely visible, whilst other days brilliance shines so bright that fear is driven out of sight. With practice, fear sharpens brilliance, and brilliance surpasses fear, as they dance together under the light of the moon. Amidst the dawning of a new lunar cycle and new calendar year, may we compassionately illuminate our fear and bravely focus our brilliance.