Diminishment
Thomas DeFreitas
September. No, you linger, summer buzz.
We crave a starker season, north and neat:
The purity of winter, day-long night.
We seek the solstice, dark sticks, chaste chill,
Where vocables of frost compose themselves
Beneath the crisp unflourishing leaves earthfallen.
Polestar of pallor, snow beneath moonlight,
Cities as quiet as country vacancy,
The timeless birth of zero, birth of death,
Dives impoverished, cloistered, penitent,
Stripped of all but his awe, December’s prayer,
The shiver-quiver, spoken ghost of breath,
Cold calendar, perennial ebb of warmth,
The proximate diminishment of light.