Buh-Bye, 2006!

Transition time (again).

Regrets? (We've had a few.)

Relief? (Sure.)

Anticipation? (You bet!)

Planning some changes? (Don't we always?)

Maybe your feelings, at this time of endings and beginnings, are like those of haiku master Kobayashi Issa (translated by Robert Hass):

New Year's Day--

everything is in Blossom!

I feel about average.

Or perhaps you're feeling the passion, excitement, and longing of Alfred Lord Tennyson:

Ring Out, Wild Bells

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light;

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

For the whole poem, which sounds as if Tennyson could have written it today, for the world as it is now, click to:

http://home.att.net/~tennysonpoetry/106.htm

And for what remains of 2006 . . . Party On!