Andrew Taylor-Troutman

For several mornings, I have slipped downstairs while the rest of my family was still asleep and fixed coffee to the sound of the dripping faucet. We left it running to prevent the pipes from freezing. Drip, drip, drip—it sounds like a clicking metronome.

The woman exclaimed, “This is dope!” I would typically not associate such an exclamation of praise with standing on a bridge over Highway 421 in the cold, while squinting into the dusk at approaching police lights.

I first learned the name Renée Nicole Macklin Good because of her brutal killing on January 7, 2026. I want to remember her as a talented poet.

After my parents were revealed as the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, I still held the belief that the ocean was inside a conch shell, even when I pressed my ear to the shell back at home in Raleigh.

With a new year comes an opportunity to reflect on what the past one provided. As 2026 begins, here’s a list of things I’d like to learn over the course of the next year — some practical, some fun, each rewarding in its own way.

My eight-year-old daughter asked for a drum for Christmas, a snare with a strap around her shoulder so that she could march around the house and through the neighborhood. This brought a Christmas carol to mind.

I loved the student reporting on Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s “Oh Shoot” sessions because I love poetry and basketball. Poetry doesn’t have to be about basketball, of course, yet there is a poetry to basketball.

I was saddened by the death of D.G. Martin, whom I long admired as a “man of letters.” Martin’s charm and humility fit the idiom of a scholar and public figure.

I have delighted in Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s new book of poems, “The New Economy,” including “Praise House,” which, even if it wasn’t specifically dedicated to Ross Gay, would call that poet to mind, especially his “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.”

I am grateful for family, friends, my faith community, food, shelter, health, and health insurance. In addition, I find it helpful to give thanks for specific smaller occasions, which brings me to the Waffle House.