Begin Again!

Begin again. The law is clear

As geologic ages rear

     Through curling heat and stiffening cold,

     Lost ocean or fresh land unrolled,

We see the new forms still appear.

Nature’s best method triumphs here;

She builds not in one column sheer,

     But birth on birth as beads are told

     New life we find, rebuilt from old,

                  Begin again.

Each new day blossoms from the bier

Of night forgotten. Have no fear—

     Let us, who are the world, be bold,

     Take hope once more, take heart, take hold

Rise now with the new risen year—

                  Begin again.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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As we embark on the “unwritten pages of the new,” I draw on the optimism of the the writer, poet, activist, lecturer, artist, and ever industrious, Charlotte Perkins Gilman–who continues to inspire me today.

So much did she inspire me when I first discovered her large body of work that I spent another several decades collecting the poetry that was nearly inaccessible before my book (cover below). Now available at scattered US universities, such as Harvard, Columbia, Boston College, Library of Congress, as well as de la Sorbonne, The British Library, University of Oxford Library, and in Germany and Switzerland (check out Worldcatalog for more locations).

(Mellen Press, 2014)

So, dear readers, I hope you will join me in following Gilman’s inspiration. Her writings are full of poems and stories about beginning again and resolve.

“To keep my health!/To do my work!/To live!/To see to it I grow and gain and give!” (“Resolve”)

As we face the new opportunities and obstacles on our path, let’s adopt her resolve.

“Take hope once more, take heart, take hold” and “begin again”!

Jacquelyn Markham (January 3, 2025)

Dinosaur National Monument with the Milky Way galaxy photographed in the night sky. (Geologic ages explained.)

“New forms still appear”