Walking Home in the Dark

 

    This appeared in Life & Legend.  I have changed it a bit since then.

Some nights I can't get home before the dark.

I can't quite make it. Some nights I brave the streets,

And I'm afraid. Who isn't? There are ex-

Acquaintances, role models, and the police

In every hole, the shadows of themselves

Awaiting the day when hair loss is reversed.

Arise, I tell them, and I say, Not now,

But after I've passed and left you where you were.

I hear them rustle in the deep-down beds,

Less than they were, more than they ever will be,

Until the day when fallen arches rise

And all their triumphs, mute so many years

Still in the gladstone bags they kept close by,

Rise to the surface, fried by benignant sun.