A Winter Night

When the shadow of the Earth echoes across the night sky, Listen to the wind while it wipes its hum dry. An owl yells to the crescent of the peek-a-boo moon, In a tree by a creek where a frog croaks his tune. "'Tis cold!" whines my pocket-covered numbing white fingers, While I suck from the swirling smoke of a cigarette's cinders. Each star above my head pushes through the thick murk, Of the light-polluted air where a smog hovers and lurks. I smirk as it lilts above the ground and its decaying brown canvas, Painted twisted twine of dying flowers' cords look like strophanthus. The poison alkali on an arrow of this African shrub, Does the same to the heart as the winter's frigid rub. As the tilt of the globe robs me of the warmth of light, My heart in this latitude burns for the strands of sight. For night, like the winter, is the setting of the sun, The setting of the star on which our bodies run. Until the night of winter has returned what it takes, I, like the leaves, live still without a will and unawake.