There Really Isn't a New Year

The minute hand does a curtsey,
salutes each number on the face
of the clock before gliding on.

We dice and mince time so we see
what we have left and badly spent,
the ticking makes us think we're in charge.

We mark the calendar when to stop
wallowing, in grief, in tobacco
or alcohol, when to start dieting

or whatever we require of ourselves.
We chop time up, cleverly tuck tasks
and mischances into folders:

“uni”, “first job”, "married life",
"alone again”, "new chapter",
"after surgery", "the pandemic"

The song of the world does not change
at midnight of the last day of the year,
measures as man-made as fireworks.

Time is really one lump, breadth and length
drawn up by cancers and car crashes,
delicate genes and a tremendous god,

one amorphous lump best hammered
into ambitions other and larger
than selves and corner offices:

the precariously poor, half-starved children,
or whatever makes you grimace all day
or adds the ache in your chest.
  
The months are fruit of myth-making.
There really isn't a new year,
there is only remaining time.