“And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
Happy New Year, and welcome to the first Poetry Friday of 2026! (Find out more about Poetry Friday here.) I’m happy to be hosting everyone today and am looking forward to reading your poems. As it is also the first Friday of the month, it’s time for another Inklings challenge. This month, I proposed that we write poems after Mary Lee’s “December” poem. Here is my offering:
January
dawns like
a new skein of yarn:
a colorful coil
of possibilities.
Row after row,
the yarn unfurls
and kaleidoscopic
patterns emerge.
Maybe not what you expected.
Maybe you don’t even like it.
But then you step back,
look from a different angle,
and behold the surprising beauty
unfolding before your eyes.
Draft, © Catherine Flynn, 2026
Please leave your link below, then be sure to visit my fellow Inklings to find out how they’re welcoming the New Year.
Heidi Mordhorst @ My Juicy Little Universe
Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche
Mary Lee Hahn @ Another Year of Reading
Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone
Reading to the Core 
Thanks for hosting us, Catherine, and for the lovely challenge! Your knitting metaphor is perfect!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for offering us something new along with a new perspective on how to view it, sounds like a good starting point for the New Year! Thanks also for hosting, and Happy New Years Catherine! 🥳
LikeLiked by 1 person
Here’s to finding surprising beauty in this new year! Thanks so much for hosting, Catherine.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Beautiful advice, Catherine, and better in your lovely poem. “Look again” is such beautiful advice! Thanks for hosting our 2026 beginnings!
LikeLiked by 1 person
The eternal link between calendar months and specific activities is always a fascinating subject for a poet’s attention and you add richly to this idea with your poem, Catherine. It is stong in metaphorical allusion and does indeed unfold before the reader’s eyes. Thank you for hosting and wishing you joy and contentment in 2026.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for hosting, Catherine! Your poem holds the perfect metaphor for January. May you have lots of beautiful surprises in 2026.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh I love that “colorful coil of possibilities.” Thank you for hosting!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Catherine! I always enjoy seeing your knitting. Thanks for getting us to take another look at how the year’s patterns are emerging.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Catherine, thank you for offering us this new skein of yarn! Lovely! xo
LikeLiked by 1 person
Here’s to finding unexpected beauty in emerging patterns! I love the optimism and sounds of ” a colorful coil/of possibilities”. As always, I’m also über impressed by your knitting skills! Thanks for the challenge and for hosting us this week.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Catherine, Thank you for hosting on this busy, first Friday of a new year! Your sweater is gorgeous and I can see how the yarn inspired your January poem. I have just resumed crocheting again (which I have not done since college), and hope to produce some garments as well.
LikeLiked by 1 person
[…] Flynn is hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup this week at her blog, Reading to the Core. I am just getting my feet wet with Poetry Friday, so I decided to push my OLW out via […]
LikeLike
Catherine, the lines, Maybe not what you expected./
Maybe you don’t even like it.” made me smile, and your whole poem filled me with optimism and reminded me there is beauty in everything. Happy New Year!
LikeLiked by 1 person
This knitting metaphor works so well with the prompt. I am trying to take a different perspective to see beauty in each day. I love how your yarn has created a kaleidoscope.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Catherine, I too am realizing the link between your poem of perspective and my efforts to see the challenges of the coming year from a few steps back. “a colorful coil of possibilities” over which we don’t have complete control is a thing to appreciate, even celebrate, right? Thanks for hosting!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Catherine, thank you for hosting. Your January poem sparkles with verbs iin your knitting metaphor. Stanza two is to be cherished with its action words: dawns, unfurls and emerge. I am pondering these thoughts as I walk forward this year. This morning I woke in the middle of a family scenario dream so I am ready to unfurl the edgeness of life and emerge with a smile and positivity.
LikeLiked by 1 person