Not Ready for Times Square 

If I could stay lucid until midnight,
I might open a window and listen as
the bells of the cathedral peal over a city
made holy by a baptism of light snow.

I might sing Auld Lang Syne
to the newborn air, potent with magic,
or I might keep telling myself
that it's just another cold night.

Waving a wimpy toodeloo
I close the blinds and unplug the tree,
fix a traditional bowl of hot oatmeal
to soothe the winter lamb in me,

recall how it wouldn't be New Year's Eve
without my nineteenth-century gothic novel.
Last year it was Wuthering Heights.
Now I'm eyeballing Jane Eyre, looking
worn and lonely, leaning against a bookend.

Something about spending the last hours
of the last night of the year with Victorian ghosts
and ominous shadows on the walls,
the faint moans of an invalid on a deathbed,
while the undertaker, his face pale and
flickering in the candlelight, stands by......  

By Lisa Lindsey