cup o' kindness yet

I watch the red sun
rise on the first day
of the new year
as coffee brews
and a curly-haired tot
plays with his toy train.

once the sun clears the horizon,
it's too bright,
so my focus shifts.

in two weeks, I'll enter
my own new year. As the number
grows, I find myself ever and always occupied with
the past, already an old-timer, remembering
long-gone faces and laughter.

I've often writ of the unexpected
this life throws, so
I'll toast new friends in surprising places,
& an old one I can't seem
to forget, as good as it gets,
each morning to contemplate
the succession of days laid out
before me.

in my mixed-metaphor, hazy,
hung-over state, the past is the shore,
the future is the depths,
& I'm barely afloat.

mingling between shallows and undertow,
taunting some quick end, counting breaths,
treading water with caffeine, alcohol, and bad grace.