New Year's Villanelle

I flip my calendar. I make a mark:
another twelvemonth gone, another year,
another cycle, dark to light to dark.

It's cold but windless in this hilltop park.
The trees are bare: their leaves have disappeared
like calendar pages, and left no mark.

The sun's returning from the faintest spark,
making bonfires from December cheer,
restarting cycles, dark to light to dark

as every nightfall promises that larks
will sing at dawn. We face it without fear,
the calendar's descent to low-light mark

trusting spring will come. The naked-barked
trees will wear their leaves again. The deer
will circle back, light-footed in the dark.

This hill is Ararat, and I the Ark's
captain seeking a lighthouse to steer
me to a new start: dark to light to dark,
a calendar whose pages bear no marks.

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