Streetlight

Streetlight

That long thin black of neck
           dark swan
in this shadowed lake of cement
                                       brick
                                                 blacktop.
Upward shoot, the slender curve
of your lonely hooded eye, flowerbud
unwinking in the unthinking still of city night.
Witness to a hundred-hundred crimes,
                     deaf and mute
pale spotlight shed more nightlight
than prison-yard beacon to
                                       moneymen
                                                 drugpockets
                                                           bloodletters.
Silent, time and trial curve your
goose-neck, head hung, bowed beneath
the unfelt guilt
          as the blazing bulb begins
                             to fade
into the tarry dark just before the
                             first fingers of dawn
sputtering like the guttering
flame of a candle
swallowed by the soft sweet sin
            of the darkened
                             pool of pitch.

Copyright Erin Pfeiffer, 2005.