From Krista: 

Friends, I am deeply glad to have turned the page on 2022, and to be walking into a new year. But Covid finally got me at Christmas, and I am still recovering. So I won't write much here. But: it is your gain instead to have a new year's poem and blessing from Pádraig. 

You'll find that below — along with invitations to join me for live interviews in Minneapolis, Seattle, and New York across the next six weeks. 

Also… as I write, it is the anniversary of John O'Dohonue's death in 2008. We were in production on this show with him when the news came of his passing. There has been some mystery in the conversation we had, and the way it entered the world, and how it has helped keep his beautiful spirit and words alive and nourishing for so many. John's wisdom has never felt more resonant than now, and we resurface that conversation below for your new year's grounding and refreshment.

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Look at those adjectives: blueback, cracked, weekday, banked, chronic, austere, lonely. And the other descriptors — adverbs, adverbial nouns — too: ached, splintering, breaking, slowly, indifferently. This is a poem of reflection, a poem that looks back with the kind of wisdom only time and aging can do. I don’t find it to be a sad poem, even though it’s a poem that doesn’t deny sadness. I find it to be a grounding poem about the actions of love, even in a house with those “chronic angers”. 

And what better way to start the year than with a question about love:

What, now that you are the magnificent age you are, do you now recognise as love, even if it was difficult to recognise at the time? 

This is the substance of the poetry of our lives, and the substance of the art of living. 

Friends, hallo to everything you’re greeting as the year begins.

PS: We’ve adapted this letter from our weekly Poetry Unbound newsletter over on Substack. You’re most welcome to explore and subscribe if you’d like to receive more poetry musings and prompts from me each Sunday, and to be part of a vibrant community of poetry lovers and newcomers alike. The comment section is one of my weekly delights — I’d love to read your answer to the above question there. You’re getting a first read here this week — find this issue on Substack Sunday, January 8th.

Tune in

On Being on the Road

Krista and the team will be taping several live interviews in coming months as part of the new On Being season of shows (!), and you can be there. Links to details, registration, and tickets below …