THE OFFICES LET OUT
Juanita Rey
At last, the inexorable traffic
has run out of places to be.
The haunting, blinding,
no longer need blaze a trail
through the inner-city warren
with those intense yellow eyes.
From the tenement window,
I see the face of the night’s last driver,
then the back of his head,
then tail-light and a couple of letters
from a license plate.
After that, nothing.
All is quiet on the street below.
And the only lights
are scattered between the
surrounding buildings.
And these are not seekers,
not trail-blazers.
They merely illuminate
whoever stays put,
who has no other place to go.
Immigrants, the poor,
the jobless, the itinerant –
we will sleep tonight
in our version of America.
Come morning, the cars return.
Where they’ve been
remains a mystery.