Final Stanzas of the Year

The clock whispers its steady refrain,

A measured beat through joy and pain.

The calendar bends to its closing rhyme,

Marking the edges of fleeting time.

The winds grow still; the skies turn gray,

As twilight leans into the day.

What was once a bloom now fades to bare,

Yet whispered promises linger in the air.

Memories ripple like fading streams,

Softened edges of broken dreams.

Lessons stitched in the year’s old thread,

Paths we walked, the words we said.

But here at the edge, a spark ignites,

In the waning hours, in the longest nights.

A quiet seed of hope takes root,

For time renews what it must uproot.

So we ink the page with one last line—

The heartache, joy, the flawed, divine—

And leave the year to its final rest,

To greet the new with an open chest.