What else should our lives be but a continual series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet become, except in dreams that blow in from out there bearing the fragrance of islands we have not yet sighted in our waking hours, as in voyaging sometimes the first blossoming branches of our next landfall come bumping against the keel, even in the dark, whole days before the real land rises to meet us.
- David Malouf, An Imaginary Life

. . .

What is bumping up against your keel
In the dark
Suggesting something ahead?
What is life hinting at, suggesting
You pay attention to?
What are the mysterious forces that surround
Trying to tell you
As we enter 2024?

. . .