This poem was inspired by the Lunar New Year parade moving through downtown Amherst, where traditional lion dance brings blessing, movement, and continuity to familiar streets. It reflects on how ritual briefly transforms everyday places, reminding a town that culture is something practiced, not archived.
On a winter afternoon the town loosens its collar,
February holding its breath just long enough.
Drums arrive first,
not asking permission,
only reminding the pavement
that it has always known rhythm.
The lions come alive between storefronts,
cloth and color learning how to breathe,
eyes blinking awake to a new year
that hasn't decided what it will be yet.
They bow to doors,
to windows steamed with tea and laughter,
to cooks pausing mid-chop
to receive a blessing made of motion.
Luck moves on four legs today,
prosperity dances sideways,
joy is loud enough to echo off brick
and still gentle enough for children
holding mittens too big for their hands.
The street becomes a calendar you can walk through.
Each stop another promise,
each drumbeat stitching past and future together.
Not spectacle for tourists,
but a living practice,
carried forward because someone cared enough
to keep the steps memorized.
By the time the lions sleep again,
Amherst will feel subtly rearranged,
as if good fortune passed through
and straightened a few things
we didn't know were crooked.
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