New

New

…wears off all things:

Shoes and cars,

Christmas stars,

kings and golden rings.



But love we’re told

If it is true

is always new

and never old.



I wonder if Odysseus

Half-heartedly

across the sea

divined the mess



he’d left behind:

a comely wife,

a married life,

love, of a kind.



Or did he mishap know

that temporality

is love’s infirmity

for us below?



We lack the angels’ plight,

their scope–

even a rope–

to scale their height.



And so we think

love is our portal

to the immortal

as down we sink.



No love’s not love

that alters when

the clock strikes ten

or fate plays rough.



Love’s the state whereby

we’re crazed to think

that passion’s blink

will never die.


...


I thought (the cheek!)

I’d found love true

In someone new,

and she was chic.



Her kisses fell like flakes

to ground–

She had me bound:

And Ah, the stakes!



She said, You are my only

heart’s desire–

Oh purple fire:

Make me unlonely.



And you, I said in trembling tone,

Are Chinese food

Not bad, not good,

–Was that my phone?



We sowed the field prodigiously

From summer’s call

Until the fall

religiously.



But what is new is never

Love and thus

this us

was not forever.



She packed her bag (the jerk)

and said

It’s dead

It didn’t work.


...



But Love’s not work, at least

the kind

that’s blind.

like the Cretan beast.



Love’s old at first hello,

Recognized,

not improvised

like Waldorf Jello.



Love says (the same) to each,

a simple word

barely heard,

touching without reach.



Love’s sad, right from the start

the rain

unexplained,

creation without art.



And love will find you hollow.

Thus, Jack and Jill

against their will

do leave the hill and follow.

...

The moral is beware the new

It’s shade

will fade

For her, and you.