Red Light, Green Light
Sept 18 2016


After
even the after-hours bars
are shuttered and locked,
the last lost drunk
staggered-off into darkness.

When hard-up cabbies, in dead-end alleys, in idling cars
start nodding-off,
slouched at the wheel
on the graveyard slog.

Before alarms go off,
and the bleary-eyed
begin their long dreary days

the downtown street is still.

Its sidewalks bare.
Its asphalt
sunk in blackness
like a deep calm pool.
Its dull facades
facing blankly out.
Darkened windows
like eyeless sockets, empty stares,
office blocks
made of mortar and brick
set timelessly there.

And its traffic lights, in the dregs of night
cycling from green to yellow to red
then green again,
signalling non-existent cars
on empty streets.
Ticking over, unwitnessed,
with the steady indifference
of inanimate things.

Utter silence,
except for the loud mechanical click
you never knew they made
in the clamour of day.

And how you imagine
our world will sound, winding down
when no one’s left to hear.



I suppose this is an urban version of the tree that falls in the forest. And kind of post-apocalyptic, as well. But that’s the feeling in the dead of night in the abandoned core. Like the last man on earth. Like the indifferent city; set in motion, and robotically continuing on. 

The poem began with that unaccustomed sound of traffic lights clicking over. How unnaturally loud it sounds, in the sleeping city. And how odd, that you never heard it before. 

Writers seem to love that time of day:   4 in the morning, or so. Not just noirs with their hard-boiled detectives, or thrillers and spies. Maybe it’s because most writers are introverts, and that time of day is not only dangerous and mysterious, but also quiet and private and slow.