Something New
BY DAVID M. PERKINS
Today is yesterday’s tomorrow.
— Ned Rorem
Every day I do
something new until it
becomes something ended
tomorrow—I bear them
no animosities.
What was done has gone on
to be a musing in
the past’s memory, and
what was said is silent,
faded now, departed—
no more than a whisper,
a will-o’-the-wisp, its
deeds dissipating, the
mist disappearing at
the morning’s brisk sunlit
kiss. No hands can hold on
to futures that have flown.
Nows are new tomorrow.
David M. Perkins
Perkins’ third poetry collection, In From Forever, was released in September of 2023, following I May or May Not Love You and Post-Modern Blues, all published by Ice Cube Press. His poems, book reviews, and essays have appeared in Cæsura, Oziana, The Wild Word, High Plains Literary Review, The Chariton Review, Willows Wept Review, Caveat Lector, The Bloomsbury Review, Broad Street Review, Christopher Street Magazine, and for the Wordsworth Trust (UK) among others. He’s an amateur (avocational) scholar of Tchaikovsky and is currently owned by a blue-point Siamese cat named Wystan.