To December

Racing in to us, dull season
short on daylight, long on endurance,
that for once I do not dread,
although I do not know
just what severity may come--
I laugh at old presumptions,
tattered hopes,
sophisticated fears
that seized their own close skies
and pulled them down like shrouds
around me...not this year.

A wiser soul may welcome cautiously,
arriving wnter,
tolerated for its piquancy,
its stinging air,
enough to foil the colorful bravado
of the schoolgirls' scarves,
uncompromising skirts
and blushing, sensuous knees.
And should that soul retreat to kneel
before some stodgy saint in penitence,
the stuttering shame it bears for looking
may become salvation
if indeed its god still smiles.

Mine does.
He understands old men like me
who suddenly, like frosting on the years,
will notice pleasure seeping in
between the breath of one more tomb
or its cessation in the death of gloom
that mortal skill alone creates...
Audacious men, indeed,
who sit at wizard keyboards
punching out the will of God

...and graciously forgiven.
~