I came across this old book of poems on my father’s bookshelf today. It was one of his college texts, and I’d often leaf through it when I was a girl, paying close attention to the poems he marked up in pencil. My favorite back then was Trees by Joyce Kilmer (‘I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree…’), but tonight this one stood out instead. Especially the final lines: ‘I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.’

For 2018, may we all become our own masters and captains.