Remember, the time of year
when the future appears
like a blank sheet of paper
a clean calendar, a new chance.
On thick white snow
you vow fresh footprints
then watch them go
with the wind’s hearty gust.
So fill your glass. Here’s tae us.
Promises
made to be broken, made to last.
– Jackie Kay, “Promise”
Notes:
- About Jackie Kay: Jackie Kay (b. 1961) is an award-winning writer of fiction, poetry and plays, whose subtle investigation into the complexities of identity have been informed by her own life. Born in Edinburgh to a Scottish mother and Nigerian father, she was adopted as a baby by a white couple. Kay’s awareness of her different heritages inspired her first book of poetry, The Adoption Papers, which dramatises her experience through the creation of three contrasting narrators: an adoptive mother, a birth mother and a daughter.
- Photographer: Matt Wyles. Poem Source: litverve
- Find this poem in Jackie Kay’s Book: Life Mask or in Poems on the Underground by Judith Chernaik
Cheers!
Happy New Year!
yes, and to eternal hope –
Here’s tae us – indeed!
Let’s make 2015 a good one 🙂
Happy New Year!
Thank you. To you and your family as well.
An interesting time of year…laden with nostalgia and latent with possibility….
It certainly is ALL that.
if anyone else is as stupid as I am–tae means to from the land of the Scots–I am sure you all got it because of the context of the poem–the first time I read it was in a tweet and I thought perhaps David had had one wee cup too many!
STILL LAUGHING!
Happy New Year to you and your family.
Thank you Indira. Happy New Year to you too.
Happy New Year dear David, Thank you, Blessing and Happiness, love, nia
Hi Nia. Happy New Year to you too. Thanks for your continued friendship.
Happy New Year David. Just to add a cultural context, for me, as a Scot, “Here’s tae us” always conjures up the rest of the toast – just in case anyone reading this doesn’t know it, here it is – “Here’s tae us. Wha’s like us? Damn few! And they’re a’ deid!”
Have a great 2015
Happy New Year Bob. I did not know the rest of the toast. Smiling. Thanks so much for sharing it. In fact, I had more readers thought I had a typo with “tae”…