OR SO IT WOULD SEEM

It's inevitable. Every time

I try to

do a New Thing, I 

wind up

remembering some Old Thing—

cold grapes, perhaps

to chill the mouth and mind—first,

so-arranged on a plastic-

wrapped disposable 

plate by some invisible hand,

then—warm, caterpillar-

yellow, on the vine 

across the alley from mom's 

girlhood backyard, brown hens in noon
sun carousing nearby;

thus, I transcend 

space and time. But only 

in a way that's useless and benign: only 

inadvertently, only in reverse
and backwards.