A Poem a day – 29 December
A Poem a day – 29 December
A poem to read — audio included if you prefer.
The Silent Teacher
The year stands almost complete now,
like a path seen from a little distance,
its turns no longer demanding explanation.
Across fields and roads and quiet rooms,
time has been moving all along,
collecting moments without asking which ones mattered most.
Some days were loud and insistent,
others barely marked themselves at all,
yet each left something behind.
Not lessons exactly —
more like traces.
Ways of seeing that were not there before.
The landscape remembers this kind of passing.
Leaves fall without regret.
Water moves on without needing to keep a record.
Even the bare branches carry evidence
of seasons lived through,
not as stories,
but as shape.
Looking back now does not require judgement.
There is no need to gather the year into a single meaning.
It was made of many moments,
each complete in its own way.
Some taught through effort.
Some through waiting.
Some through simply being endured.
What has passed does not vanish.
It settles quietly into what comes next,
informing it without instruction.
The year has been a teacher
not because it tried to be,
but because it happened.
And standing here, close to its end,
there is room to acknowledge that
every moment — even the unnoticed ones —
has already done its work.
