New Year's Day (Poetry)

Trees wet and dripping the new day’s surly gloom
as though all the trials and sorrows of the past years
have gathered here to testify and blend
their dismal shades of unremitting grey.

By three o’ clock the dusk is creeping in
and breeze high in the pines is fluttering
the needles darkly clumped against the sky’s
low stretch of dull-edged steel.

Firework celebrations done, the dreary street deserted —
no one comes or goes among the puddles and
the litter, while overhead a plane drones on its way
through narrow corridors of cloud.

Dawn rose late and found no hint of sun —
no watery soft gleam to cheer the ritual
turning of the calendar — no glow
of promise from a rising moon and now

light fades some more and shrinks under a downpour —
the first day so diminished, so near-done
we draw the curtains, switch the widescreen on
and lose ourselves in make-believe nostalgia.