On New Year's Day, a man sweeps his porch and then does something small and ordinary: he trims his fingernails. The title promises resolutions, but nothing grand is resolved. Instead the poem settles on a quiet, private ritual and treats it with real attention.
The speaker seems content, even a little delighted. He enjoys the "click of a clean bite" and is struck by how little he feels, since the nails are "beetle-hard" walls on the very fingertips we use to touch the world. He takes care to keep each clipping whole, a "nearly perfect crescent," and admires it for half a second before letting it drop into the snow.
The mood is calm, observant, and gently humorous. The snow, a fresh start, receives these tiny discarded pieces of himself. Judging by the title, the poem suggests that a new year may be begun not with big promises but with small, careful, satisfying acts.