a secret smuggles just a bit of daylight from the midnight hour,
where bits of shattered velvet sun reside
in carvéd hollows, despairing.
strung like spools of thread, an almost-light
drapes across boughs of coniferæ,
—spared by god from deciduity—
necks craned to watch the leaping star
spring into a nestled pose,
belying that there ever was, in all time,
such a silly thing as sunset,
and scoffing all the while of its slow descent.