My Promise

I won’t drag an old myth out of the scrolls
and doll it up in today’s clothes and I won’t sit

by any campfire singing how bright
was the old bulb before we tossed it out,

either. This, our year, our time, dribbles away
like a rain-slicked ball skidding out of bounds

and cold hands and bent spines won’t reel
that runaway piggy back to the bank.

We’re all good at tossing things out – food and thought,
words and children. Yesterday’s word was amass

and today it’s de-clutter, but dust will collect
while we stab and shovel each new hole,

locked in the footsteps of others, penned in place
with no wax for what we took as our wings.

*

David P. Kozinski’s poems have appeared most recently in the Bay to Ocean Journal and New World Writing Quarterly. His full-length books are “I Hear It the Way I Want It to Be,” which was a finalist for the Inlandia (California) Institute’s Hillary Gravendyke Prize, and “Tripping Over Memorial Day” (both Kelsay Books). His chapbook, “Loopholes” (Broadkill Press) won the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize. Kozinski is Poet in Residence at Rockwood Park & Museum, near Wilmington, Delaware and has been a mentor with Expressive Path, a non-profit that fosters arts participation for underserved youth in Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties, since its inception. He received a Delaware Division of the Arts poetry fellowship.