On New Year's Eve

we make midnight a maquette of the year: frostlight glinting off snow to solemnize the vows we offer to ourselves in near silence: the competition shimmerwise of champagne and chandeliers to attract laughter and cheers: the glow from the fireplace reflecting the burning intra-red pact between beloveds: we cosset the space of a fey hour, anxious gods molding our hoped-for adams with this temporal clay: each of us edacious for shining or rash enough to think sacrifice will stay this fugacious time: while stillness suspends vitality in balance, as passions struggle with passions for sway, the mind wends towards what's to come: a callithump of fashions, ersatz smiles, crowded days: a bloodless cut that severs soul from bone: a long aching quiet in which we will hear nothing but the clean crack of our promises breaking.