Saving Daylight

I am not ready to abandon

the dark hours, whose

shadows shelter my self-disgust.

It is too soon and I am too cold

to slip out from under

quilted layers of dark light.

To become uncovered

is to come undone.

Turn back the clock, I say!

To another day in the long ago

when I was so young and self-possessed,

innocent of temporal ravages

and beholden to no final moment.

Allow me to dream for yet another hour.

Keeper of time, though you

stifle my life-breath,

I bear you no grudge for the

losses that cannot be regained.

But let it be known

I have no appetite for death.