Compartment

November light bathes the trail in artifice
Illusory brightness and warmth
Deceiving the hopeful journeyman
Into fantasies of life and health
When a 4:30 sunset is all that awaits him

Standing before the shaving mirror
He could imagine he merely sees jowls
The price of middle age
Rather than the swollen lymph nodes
Now riddling his body from neck to groin

Is it the power to trick himself
Imagining an early sunset is not inevitable
Or is it the power to compartmentalize
To bathe in light now rather than fear darkness
That will save him from himself