best at F11
Sonnets
Poet Lariat
BY NIGHT THE CITY SLEEPS
By night, the city sleeps, the citizens repose
Except the ambulance’s penetrating wail.
Traffic lights go red and green, who knows?
Lighted streets the skies obscure, the moon make pale.
Behind the eyes the dreams and visions flow,
phantoms of the day’s forgotten things,
fears in forms distorted come and go,
blurred images of what tomorrow brings?
The dawn, which should refresh, may not.
The people rise and quickly outward rush
through the door, as children whom the law begot
grim, their picture painted by a godless brush.
If only in their hurrying they could upward look
and see their destiny in God’s most wondrous book!
Poems from the Eighth Decade
Copyright © Harold Macdonald 2004
used with permission