Winter Vagrant

Today I am a vagrant –
peeking ‘round the corners,
hitching rides
and begging sustenance
from passersby
who can be counted on
to look into my parvenu

imagination – take
its train and get off
at this January afternoon’s
beguiling station. I am a bum –
but then they are the sum
of my attractions and aversions
and perversities and predilections

and it’s not like
they don’t know
whose thumb is up –
or what he’s thinking
down below. Winter middays
are discreetly slow, thank heavens:
till they darken –

swallow up the diamond light.
But what a graceful
drifting afternoon
before that killing
and delicious night –
digging into stolen sighs
and other spectral cold surprises

with my sneaky spoon.
If I could steal the sun
and moon I’d snatch them both
in January like a demon cat.
Let some divine
constabulary lock
me up for that.






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