Nocturnal Notations

Through the rain spattered window glass
the street lights were smudged golden daubs
dripping yellow radiance on passersby
whose damp, closed faces were like wet umbrellas,
hope folded around flimsy spokes.

The girl on the billboard was laughing
in one of those reckless, eternal moments
selling metropolitan myths across
carnivalesque carriageways and pagan pavements
as the trees shook the silver drops off their emerald finery.

The taillights of receding cars were
lozenges sucked smaller and smaller
by the dark tongue of the night
as they disappeared down the throat
of a hungry city swallowing both bile
and bliss in its omnivorous appetite.