fresh orange clementines on a
white kitchen counter,
incongruous with a windowed view of
white winter's barometric pressures.

eye illusions,
making no sense,
like me drinking
ice coffee in NYC on
New Year's Eve.

New Years Eve too,
a nonsensical notation,
an illusory line,
imposed upon us by
calendar salesmen and astronomers,
for profit and seals of good timekeeping.

There is no solstice,
no verifiable, demonstrable,
celestial line of demarcation,
just a box on a calendar
of man-made paper,
man-dating
fresh thinking,
de-man-ding,
we gaily clad ourselves
in suits of optimistic armor,
heavy with good cheer,
so much so,
we list to one side
under a burden
of greater expectations

the starting line is
worldwide, continental.

a ball drops
to signal the beginning of a new
human race to
another artifice in future time.

with inebriated staggering starts
over staggered time zones,
thus creating a continuous,
rolling wave-eve of resolutions.

I say to myself,
what the heck,
why not!

if the whole world
must share
but one
global illusion,

this one,
fresh starts of fresh hearts,
is not a bad one,
maybe, perhaps,
as good as it gets?