Almaniacal

Metonym of numbered days,
Suggests the morning paper,
Of a painted almanac,

And the mind wanders away
To wondering how many
Layers of metonymy

A phrase like that can contain.
Almanacs are metonyms
For brief human existence,

But only if brevity
Is held to be preordained
Exactly, therefore numbered

In advance of actual
Living of it. Prophesy?
Aren’t an almanac’s pages

Also metonyms for that?
Then there’s seasonality,
Cultivation, production,

Civilization, printing—
So many metonymies
In one page of almanac—

Next year, the days to be lived;
Last year, the old almanac,
Worthless as past it forecast.

Now, an era, typified,
Almanac as artifact—
Is there anything that’s not

Possible to infer by
Associations like that?
One problem with metonyms

Is just that—you never know
How far associations
Keep going after the fact.