When No Star Shined

Once, when no star shined
on slick, black, asphalt roads,
the murky wetness
of November's watered nights
a freedom-feeling and
strangeness-sense inspired.
The moisture lubricated
sluggish mental cogs that
all the dirty, dry, autumnal season
had rusted tight and atrophied.
Wildness no man can tell
I knew then.
All November's labored length
my nightly notions filled:
my bacchic spirit soared and flew,
traveled far, saw much in waking dream,
along a single street, wet
and splotched with light from cars
which coughed their fumes
as they passed my momentary immortality.
And now...
time has come when I no longer
feel delight to revel in the wildness
that I knew:
senses, now subordinate to sense,
defuse the spell
and November nights are merely
murky.