Day: November 15, 2019

Poem of the Day – Epilogue

Below, the content of an email message from Brother Dennis who, as you may recall, launched his Poem of the Day project one year ago.

The daily poem project began on this day–November 15–of 2018.  It sputtered to an end on April Fool’s day of the this year, but in observance of that beginning date, I’ve written the following.  Like all the other daily poems, written on the day it was to be sent, and unrevised.

A year that begins on this date

Is a peculiar sort of year.

No parties the night before,

No honking of horns and screech

Of noisemakers when the clock’s

Hands arrive at their destination.

 

The glide of the boat to the dock,

The bounce of the airplane’s wheels

On the tarmac, evidence of fate

Tempted but its catalog of horrors

Deftly sidestepped, its malevolence

Denied. Or so we believe.

 

But belief can take many forms,

Notions flitting like bats

In the dark caves of the mind,

Scrolls reeking of ancient dust,

Tomes written in dead languages

Parsed by scholars wearing beards

So long they reach into places

That crawl with worms and

Vermin of uncertain provenance.

In what tome or scroll is it written,

That the year must begin on one day

And not another? Or that the year must begin,

And end, or even exist at all?

 

I ask the question,

Expecting an answer,

But all I hear is the scrape

Of my feet on the ground.

But I’m standing still.

It must be the earth

Moving beneath my shoes.

A raspy, irritating sound that

Will go on and on and on

Until I am insane

And no longer care.