A Walk at Winter Dusk

These moments of joy, so bold and industrious:
These private delights, disastrous though they may be,
Are easily the fondness of this life.

Oh, crocodile tears, so certain and sure!
Your employment is the result merely of ennui,
Not the noble rites of pragmatism or ambition.

February Moon at lavender sky;
It looms above the birch tendrils
As they scrape against this most insidious night.

That clutch of chest and stitch of breath
While enveloped in forthcoming darkness –
This is the felicity of fortune and blood.

The pull of musky twilight, the gradient of citrus
Into sanguine fire as they radiate into the heavens –
It provides a malign sense of comfort, endless miles away.   

But all this present, I hurry not.
Rather, I enjoy the tapered threat to
The cling of my life's sweet breath;

The random fall of snow off branch,
The sundry growl of an anonymous beast,
The inevitable advance of evening.

This is my private delight,
The manifestation of my fondness for disaster:
My emboldened moment of joy in this life.