When Old is New

by Kevin T McEneaney

I’ve heard folks make fun of Homer

and his “rosy-fingered dawn” trope,

but those who say such things

have little appreciation of dawn:

its pristine hope, awesome promise,

that glow making all things new,

which is what good poetry attempts to do.

*

Dawn lightens the landscape and soul.

Older men come to realize that dawn

was and is the best feature of life

they habitually slept through—

that poetry of earth bathed in dew.

*

Walking barefoot in the cool of dawn

comes close to re-entering childhood

where life is a day-long party,

symposium of daily discovery

like admiring a grasshopper jumping….