Blank Sheets

My husband and I are halfway through our annual diet. It’s what amounts to a New Year’s resolution for us, I guess. But really, the reason we diet every January is because that’s the best time — no parties with lots of delicious food. Also, it’s a good way to recover from the excess of the holidays. And a good way to make sure Jason doesn’t revert to a pre-diabetic state.

Why don’t I set New Year’s resolutions otherwise? I used to. When I was a girl, my parents once or twice had us write out our yearly goals on fresh sheets of blank paper. We stuck the papers in our Christmas stockings, which were still hanging over the fireplace. I didn’t see those goals again until the next year. Unsurprisingly, I made little headway when I didn’t have to actually look at the paper every day. It was essentially the same as throwing a coin in a wishing well.

But even when I kept a list of resolutions in front of me all year, I never did very well with the long-term ones. I’ve taken the goal-setting classes, but still I’m not a good long-term planner. I get overwhelmed and distracted. So, no New Year’s resolutions with all of their gravity and potential guilt. I do short-term really well. Just bite-sized steps toward eternity.

FYI, I have an upcoming due date for the UTSPS annual contest, so after that I will be able to post some more original poems. For now, enjoy this one by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. about the promise that lies in a blank piece of paper. What will you write? What will you create today? I hope it meets a better fate than “some bonfire’s pile.” Or the inside of a Christmas stocking!

To a Blank Sheet of Paper
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Wan-Visaged thing! thy virgin leaf
To me looks more than deadly pale,
Unknowing what may stain thee yet, —
A poem or a tale.

Who can thy unborn meaning scan?
Can Seer or Sibyl read thee now?
No, — seek to trace the fate of man
Writ on his infant brow.

Love may light on thy snowy cheek,
And shake his Eden-breathing plumes;
Then shalt thou tell how Lelia smiles,
Or Angelina blooms.

Satire may lift his bearded lance,
Forestalling Time’s slow-moving scythe,
And, scattered on thy little field,
Disjointed bards may writhe.

Perchance a vision of the night,
Some grizzled spectre, gaunt and thin,
Or sheeted corpse, may stalk along,
Or skeleton may grin.

If it should be in pensive hour
Some sorrow-moving theme I try,
Ah, maiden, how thy tears will fall,
For all I doom to die!

But if in merry mood I touch
Thy leaves, then shall the sight of thee
Sow smiles as thick on rosy lips
As ripples on the sea.

The Weekly press shall gladly stoop
To bind thee up among its sheaves;
The Daily steal thy shining ore,
To gild its leaden leaves.

Thou hast no tongue, yet thou canst speak,
Till distant shores shall hear the sound;
Thou hast no life, yet thou canst breathe
Fresh life on all around.

Thou art the arena of the wise,
The noiseless battle-ground of fame;
The sky where halos may be wreathed
Around the humblest name.

Take, then, this treasure to thy trust,
To win some idle reader’s smile,
Then fade and moulder in the dust,
Or swell some bonfire’s pile.