My best-ever fortune cookie contained a variant of Feynman’s maxim:
“The work will teach you how to do it.”
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not yet noon on New Year’s Day, the new words search begins croakingly, then stumble upon a philosophical notional, celebrating messy processes, equating to outcome, robbing me of my lazy-all-in-NY Day-no-work-ethics
many a-poem writ, more half-baked, on shelf resting, but the pointillist theoretical, paint by point, insists: a clean year is a clean canvas deserving, so wade in the water of frozen creeks silencing gurgles, catch and release, a natural new work now!
an admonishment most personal, for the production of poems has dimmed, excuses, plentiful but it seemed my harshest critic, MM&I,^ never provide an editor’s sign off, these pieces of me, pass their date of expiration, & will then, my own passing
the work teaches how but never guaranteeing good enough