New Year’s Resolution
by D. R. James

A cliché of sequins staccatos
across this first verse of sun, across
undisturbed snow as white and composed
as Styrofoam–till you can’t dismiss

what’s winking, what truly is twinkling,
or then the burly squirrel bounding through,
a cartoon ball bouncing out its tune.
Granted, this should finally do you good.

In fact, it should go on resounding
against the discordant rounds without
and within, against the monotoned news,
the refrained and distasteful self-

revelations, against the flatted notes
of familial failures, of aging and its kin,
against the perennial drone toward ever more
of the ho-hum. Yes, you’d think it should …

and it does: this New Year lyric–landscape
writ bright with ice diamonds, wet confetti
free-falling at will from still branches–sings,
albeit pianissimo, against it all.



 

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