“Completing the harvest” of two years of poetry columns in the News, a final column of thanks to poets and readers. Eighteen local and regional poets have appeared in this space.

The moon this morning is a golden horn. To the south and west, the planets are shining — Jupiter, Venus. Yesterday at the same morning hour the moon was a creamy horn, caught, like an animal in a thicket, in a mesh of trees.

Years ago I had a friend, culturally but not religiously Jewish, who devised a third greeting: “Happy Hanukwanzamas!” I was there the day he worked it out on a piece of paper, fitting the three words together.

The jays wake up mouthy. The crows flap shouting out of sleep. Everyone has a voice. Especially the silent ones.

To be inside a fish’s October dream — there are worse fates!

With dogs, touch is talking, and talking is touch. Our voice tone is received as hard or soft hands, and we ourselves begin to feel our words, their hardness and their softness, tangibly in our mouths.

Each of us has one life. It flows into us at birth and out of us at death. Life keeps on flowing, of course, but the particularity and shape of our one life is gone.

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, the words of a fine Norwegian poet came to mind: “It’s not all as evil as you think.”

The best poem I’ll ever write is the one I’ll never write. It’s the one I’ll write only in my head, under the influence of bicycling, which apparently is for me as potent as the more illicit highs other writers have pursued for inspiration.

The best response, which isn’t actually a response, is to live as wisely and deeply as you know how. Each of us has one life, and it’s ours to live. The French have a phrase for this, naturally. It’s “vivre la vie,” living life.