"Burning the Old Year" describes the annual scene of the speaker setting fire to the remnants of her past year and the conflation of the items with the air around her. It touches upon the impermanence of every year, how most of it is combustable and how once burned, one must start anew with little to nothing. The speaker lastly reflects on how the only thing the fire lacks are "the things [she] didn't do".

Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri and is the Poetry Foundation's Young People's Poet Laureate. Earning her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio, Nye has received countless awards and honors for her work including the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement, several Pushcart Prizes and many more. Her work draws from her experience of the many cultures she is a part of and she tends to focus on the minute qualities of life as well as the perspectives of everyday ordinary people.