Dregs
Dec 31 2010


The dregs of a dying year
are like the grounds of yesterday’s coffee,
dumped in the trash.
A stubbed-out butt, lipstick smudged
in a clump of ash.
Open another can
a fresh pack.

I’m not sure if I should lament its passing,
or feel glad
to be done with it.
Not that the new one will change much;
it never does.
I will tear a page off the calendar.
There will be sun
wheeling steadily west.
And, as it’s always done,
the 3rd planet in this minor system
will follow its trajectory.
The heavens move,
and I feel nothing
down here on earth.
On January 1st,
in the exact same winter.

Even in the inevitable thaw
that comes somewhere in the middle
it will be wet and dull and grey,
and I will still feel invisible.
And even though
there will be a little more light each day,
I will see the same horizon
the same face beside me
will still turn away.

When we first met
had greedy animal sex
we could feel the world move
again, and again.
And now, the beginning of the end
in a brand new year
will start with me
sipping hot black coffee
in a cold kitchen.
And you, still in bed,
fumbling for a cigarette.



It probably would have been easier if this had been autobiographical.

Actually, it didn’t start out as lovelorn at all. What I had in mind as I set out to write takes to the 2nd last stanza to make its eventual appearance: “the inevitable thaw” that seems to come sometime every winter. (Because we just had one, and will shortly have another: always a mess in the middle of winter.)

And then I thought it’s December 31, so how can I possibly get away without writing something about the passing of a year, the beginning of a new one. Which always makes me think of the cartoon depiction of the bearded old man and the newborn baby …and then want to subvert that by perhaps making the old year the one full of promise and vigour, and the new one senescent and decrepit. (In the end, both years came out rather bleak!)

The whole astronomical bit, the mechanistic universe – the wheeling sun, the planet on its pre-ordained trajectory – is there in order to get at this idea of the indifference of nature to man, as well as the arbitrariness of the calendar; and especially so, since the beginning of the new year inexplicably falls right in the middle of an undifferentiated season. (“ …January 1st / in the exact same winter.”)

And that, in turn, led to “the heavens mov(ing)”, which brought immediately to mind the obvious sexual connotation of “feel(ing) the world move”. And so, without the least intention, the poem gave this to me, and told me where to take it. Of course, I was pleased to be able to write something about sex …and even use the word sex. (“Greedy animal sex”, no less!) Because, for a self-proclaimed poet, you have to admit my stuff is pretty damned sanitized and safe. Hardly anything erotic at all. So it’s nice to have the nerve to go there, for once.

I quite like the “call-backs”: how it gives the poem a coherence, and pulls the strings tight (a coherence which the description of its haphazard genesis makes hard to believe!) What I’m referring to here is the coffee and cigarettes, as well as the heavens moving/earth moved bits. I think I’ve managed a nice restrained use of metaphor, allusion, and ambiguity. And I particularly like all the things that go unsaid, the back story that’s left to the reader’s imagination. And finally, I like the misdirection: yes, it does start off rather negatively (what else is new!); but still, I think the direction the poem ultimately takes is quite unexpected (just as it was in the writing).