At the Cannery
“A quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream."
-John Steinbeck
Tomorrow it will be New
Year’s Day I indulge
in reminiscing about the moth-
eaten town we bundled up in
wool scarves to gills
dusk, the rosy seaside partygoers
shimmering along
streets like sardines.
Street lamps bewitch
gloom, wisp, the haze
blue eyes, your crooked tooth
Monterey's shushing December sea
lulling down the lanes lined
with ice sculptures, costumes, puppets
the big band on stage,
trees to twinkle mythical
spells in their branches.
Tomorrow it will be
the new year, the sea
retreating past rocks
in velvet and sage
past the tender heads of sleeping
high-hope revelers.
When a new year was just
time passing, a chance
to be again who we once were.
Katie Kenney studied publishing at University of Denver's Publishing Institute and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Western Washington University. Her poems have appeared in Grub Street Literary Magazine, Moss Puppy Magazine, and Waffle Fried among others. Originally from Northern California, she now lives in New England with her cat Mabel.
“A quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream."
-John Steinbeck
Tomorrow it will be New
Year’s Day I indulge
in reminiscing about the moth-
eaten town we bundled up in
wool scarves to gills
dusk, the rosy seaside partygoers
shimmering along
streets like sardines.
Street lamps bewitch
gloom, wisp, the haze
blue eyes, your crooked tooth
Monterey's shushing December sea
lulling down the lanes lined
with ice sculptures, costumes, puppets
the big band on stage,
trees to twinkle mythical
spells in their branches.
Tomorrow it will be
the new year, the sea
retreating past rocks
in velvet and sage
past the tender heads of sleeping
high-hope revelers.
When a new year was just
time passing, a chance
to be again who we once were.
Katie Kenney studied publishing at University of Denver's Publishing Institute and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Western Washington University. Her poems have appeared in Grub Street Literary Magazine, Moss Puppy Magazine, and Waffle Fried among others. Originally from Northern California, she now lives in New England with her cat Mabel.
