The New Optimism

The recital of the new optimism was oft interrupted, rudeness in the ramparts, an injured raven that needed attendance, pre-op nudity. The young who knew everything was new made babies who unforeseeably would one day present their complaint. Enough blame to go around but the new optimism didn’t stop, helped one pick up a brush, another a spatula even as the last polar bear sat on his shrinking berg thinking, I have been vicious but my soul is pure. And the new optimism loves the bear’s soul and makes images of it to sell at fair-trade craft fairs with laboriously knotted hunks of rope, photos of cheese, soaps with odd ingredients, whiskey, sand, hamburger drippings, lint, any and everything partaking of the glowing exfoliating cleanup. And the seal is sponged of oil spill. And the broken man is wheeled in a meal. War finally seems stupid enough. You look an animal in the eye before eating it and the gloomy weather makes the lilacs grow. Hello, oceans of air. Your dead cat loves you forever and will welcome you forever home.