(HOST) Commentator Tom Slayton’s New Year’s resolutions came to him in verse this year…so here are his rhymed thoughts on that tangled annual subject….
(SLAYTON) As snow outside is slowly falling,
I feel my moral compass stalling;
I’ve got a dozen resolutions,
Yet they all beg for some dilution
Since I know well, I’ll never keep ’em
It makes my New Year’s turmoil deepen.
I should walk more, I should be thinner;
Yet when the time comes round for dinner
I take more food than can be healthful,
I try to joke, I must be stealthful.
I like entrees, I love all starches.
My weight will give me fallen arches
Unless I change my willful ways,
Say fewer "yesses" and more "nays"
And yes, I know I should be walking
But winter weather finds me balking,
And all my discipline is spent;
My iron willpower has been bent.
I’m sure that making resolutions
Is but, at best, a pale solution
Against such things as Wall Street’s wailings
And all my own pathetic failings.
The New Year comes, the Old Year passes;
We sing some songs and raise our glasses.
And yet the world’s bereft condition
Requires more than our contrition.
The planet’s health, its joy and beauty
Must call us all to face our duty,
Curb our desires, drive our cars less,
Protest the ignorance and darkness
That blight our world – and while we’re at it,
We might just try to change our habits,
Produce less garbage, eat less meat,
And walk more on our own two feet!
(The one excuse for resolutions
Is that they might produce solutions
For social ills that keep us guessing.
And that would surely be a blessing.)
So herewith I present to you
A list of things I’d like to do
But prob’ly won’t, in this New Year:
I’ll try to keep my brain in gear,
I’ll eat more fruit, I’ll eat more veggies.
I won’t give family members wedgies.
In fact, I’ll TRY to act my age,
Be more sedate and more engaged,
Read more good books and watch less telly,
Eat more brown rice and less grape jelly.
I’ll finish Tolstoi’s War and Peace,
Turn down the thermostat; wear fleece.
Read better books and study art;
Take back the grocery shopping cart…
We can, in fact, combat despair
By breathing in the pure cold air
Of our beloved northern state;
Its beauty makes the smallest great,
And must be saved from profiteering,
Development, and forest clearing.
I vow to do my humble duty
To help save our Green Mountain beauty.
But please remind me, with velocity,
To skip the morals and pomposity!
Be less self-righteous, be more humble,
Admit mistakes whene’er I fumble.
(Lord knows I blow it plenty often,
As my poor brain begins to soften.)
I’ll bless the day, salute the times –
And no more curse this year with rhymes!