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.