Poem #1: What This Poem Is Not

This writer would like to get a few things straight,
right off the bat, about this first poem, this
first poem of a month of poems.

This is not an exercise in strained rhyme.
No holiday will be mentioned, with its attendant emotional baggage to build on.
No pets, alive or dead, will appear, as a metaphor for attachment,
loss or impermanence.
No shaking of a fist at the government, television news,
the current state of pop music or the weather.

No moon will slowly rise over the third stanza, imparting an image of cold loneliness.
No reference will be made to specific movies released in the 1930s,
or quotes from their dialogue used.

No names of famous personages will be dropped, or picked up.
No essential secret about the meaning of life will be divulged,
as the writer really never had any in the first place.

All the writer wants to do for this first poem
is to describe how he's looking out his second-floor window;
the neighbors are having their first garage sale
and already people are picking through boxes of shoes, children's clothes,
bad art and mismatched coffee cups.
But I am taking my time with my own coffee, in my own mismatched cup--
not to rummage through what others no longer need,
but to instead clear away the dead
(there, I've used the word)
from last year's garden, and make room
for those rising from the ground
(and there is a holiday reference, which snuck in)
All I want to do is clear my garden.
The rest, dear reader, is for you to figure out.