New

Old, old, old poem about a cliche.

These book analogies are really wearing thin,
she says, perched out front. Waving a mental cigarette through the air
(it's the picture that counts).

He dances circles on the lawn, swinging his croquet mallot.
Swivelling his hips like a lost, plastered idiot.

She continues idly.

What is the point of a new year, a new page, a new story,
if the plot from each previous year stays on record? There is no ab-

solution in it.

Shaking dust from fingers and shoulders, he shivers up and down
before summoning a singular, angular sentence. It rings

out with the clarity

of one-hundred gold bells: "There is a difference between what
you have done and will do. A new crop does not mean the garden

has never had weeds."