My best-ever fortune cookie contained a variant
of Feynman’s maxim:
“The work will teach you how to do it.”
<|>
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
1/1/22 4:46PM
^Me, Myself, & I
