First Day

We wonder about the “newness”

Of yet another “New Year.”

It’s not as if we get to start over

Clean slate, empty conscience,

Another bout of innocence.

It’s not as if the things we did are

All forgiven, mostly forgotten,

Just part of experiences that lose

Their significance as we age,

A bit older, perhaps even wiser.

New Year’s Day and we get to feel

Again the irony of days and years,

And how we would like them to

Perform, a cleansing of sorts –

We’d wash our hands of the past

And start out new, ready to take on

New roles in the utopia of a “New

Year,” but we don’t, it doesn’t.

The new year is all the past years

In disguise and we’re still the same

Folks we were – everything ventured

And nothing much gained.

      Chapter and Verse

Finishing that next chapter,

I promised myself,

I put down my kindle and

enter the book of my day

a much more prosaic text

choppy at best, poorly plotted

off on a tangent here or then.

I open again this clumsy

stream of consciousness

this babbling brook I’m living in,

this narrative I’m trying to write

with a leaky pen.

Today I’ll be a ghost haunting

this house or maybe a spy lurking

in the shadows, or perhaps

I’ll be the detective who finally

works out the mystery

that surrounds us all.

I’ll write a chapter or two of it

Then I’ll disappear into a nap

The inevitable denouement

to all this.

        Correction

Why is it that we can’t

Correct a moment

A moment, the moment

When it all went wrong

When we rushed in

instead of pausing to

Think things through,

to self-correct before

things played out

the way they did?

Why no do-overs when

We need them so badly?

Why can’t we wake to find

That it was all a dream?

Why doesn’t some wizard

Cast an appropriate spell

On everyone involved?

Why haven’t we perfected

Time-travel so we could go back

To undo what we know now

We shouldn’t have done?

That’s the problem with the way

Things happen in our lives.

A moment happens and then

it’s gone, gone off to join

all the other moments

we can’t change.

J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Black Coffee Review, Literary Yard, Sparks of Calliope, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, Journal of Expressive Writing, Lightwood, and Highland Park Poetry.