New Years

There is a land where people neither know nor care how old they are; where a New Year, ushered in by the Southern Cross, opens two seasons: Season of Sun and Season of Wind, these segmented by moons, from Rainbow Fish Moon to the Moon of Logs and Open Sea until the Southern Cross returns again. There is another land where a New Year, flexible, not pinpointed by date, marks a day when all debts are paid, all wrongs set right, all quarrels end and even the implacable foe becomes a friend. Then there is the land we know where New Year, calendared and marked immovably and festooned with resolutions, still does not bind us to our best intentions, its people knowing that every day offers the gift of a new beginning, a New Year.