A Toast to 2025
A Poem
Happy New Year!
I hope the last hours of 2024 found you with friends, eating good food, and reflecting on a year well spent. For me, it found me gathered in a room with friends (both old and new), listening to cheesy toasts.
In between flights from LA to CT and back again, with delays and added layovers, enjoying precious time with friends and family I only see in person two or three times a year, I had not prepared anything to toast the new year with. And yet, that didn’t stop my friends from expecting something.
Me: “No really, I don’t have anything.”
Them: “But you do though.”
Me: “No, really, I don’t”
Them: expectant grins.
Me: “Give me five minutes.”
I scurried off into a back bedroom and, trying to ignore the Christmas music, typed something together on the notes app of my phone.
The words that arrived had legs and were surprisingly touching. Thus, after leaving the party at 2 am, once I got home I continued to tweak and tinker with the lines. Not a bad way for a writer to begin 2025.
Here you have it, my first creative work of the year.
A Cheesy Toast for 2025
2024 was a year of open doors,
And shut ones too.
Missing loved ones too far,
And time spent so dear.
But I hope you look back
With fondness and intrigue,
On the cares and concerns
You once held in fear
And turn, at last,
To this new year
With burdens set down
And easy cheer
To lean in on adventure
Which is not a race
But a course to discover
All the blessings and grace
Which God has prepared
For those who draw near,
Those whom He loves,
All those He holds dear.
Happy New Year.
S. C. Durbois Newsletter
1st Saturday every month: a new original short story.
3rd Saturday every month: a writerly check-in with updates.
Happy New Year