Today

In a quick-March moment
we’re back in long black underwear,
white cold, crossing blade-slick streets. 

Steam rising
between the ears
of every suited sidewalk vagrant.

Attaché eyes cast in concrete,
gazes fastened to ropes,
tied to passing feet.

I could stay roped down,
encrusted under the brown ice-pack.
I could continue to wake up
in a four-seasoned winter
of cold sweats.

But a purple horizon
at the West edge of town,
left-over light,
catapulted over
by a glistening sunrise,
begs a moment of Royal deference.

And I choose to give it.