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The Definite Article

The postmortem yielded little
so we broke for refreshments
comparing notes on the different containers
we had drunk Coke from over the years
one hyperbolic guy insisting
that he had drunk Coke
from a hobble-skirt bottle
so designed to make them easy to find
in a bucket of ice water.
We were able to reach a consensus
on a few agenda items
including overuse of the definite article
whose red flag had taxied many to Google.
I pulled my backpack onto one shoulder
and was struck by the connect-the-dots simplicity
of a huge wooden waterwheel
surrounded by loaded brushes
pointed at several hundred gessoed canvases
strewn about a makeshift landscape.
I returned to share my excitement
but the cupboard
merely echoed the rigors of rehearsals.