Sometimes, if an evening is cool, and the breeze brushes my face just so
and the leaves shake with stifled laughter from their bony branches
rustling softly and murmuring like huddled sisters,
sometimes if the moon is full and my eyes are drawn up from slate and concrete,
the brownstone skyline crouching under a velvet sky,
sometimes my sorrow nods off in a sudden cat nap and
my heart brims and breathing quickens,
blood flushes my face and
my brain vibrates with purpose
and for a moment I believe I might live a different life,
not a shadow, flitting across the walls of consciousness
but a fiery thing, alive and connected,
a beam of intention
fearful of nothing
imbuing all with a meaning I invent and
alive
to this overripe world.