This year I won’t read the news, won’t sog
myself in helplessness or lose heart in the lies
nice people tell, try not to feel blue about where
we’re all headed and be sure to lie down when I can

and look at the sky. The old timers say
what a great city this was before new people came
and filled in the lake. There were reeds and everybody
had his own boat. The dumb were uninformed

and knew it, not so proud of everything
they just learned on the Internet. That was when Mexico
was the real Mexico, back in the big lake, big
pyramid days. Think of your old friend

and the father he lost when he was twelve.
No way to Google what it meant, he ripped around the world
for years, then shot himself on the basement couch. We all
know people who nurse too long their wounds

because the facts aren’t available.
I passed a young man chipping paint around a window. Later
I passed him again when he’d begun to prime.
He didn’t notice me as I didn’t notice the people

who passed me when I scraped and painted
decades ago. Where were they going and did they
get there? Nobody knows and you can’t look it up and most
are dead and those who aren’t don’t remember, which doesn’t mean

it doesn’t matter. Anymore, I only go to New Jersey
for funerals. It’s just worked out that way. Other places I go
for other reasons I don’t know, and I resolve this year,
when I’m lying on the grass, not to think about it anyway.