Cats say goodnight to kings.
The bright fog settles under scoops of cold fire,
streetlights embedded in a humid night.
The rain like pennies battered the grass,
flattened fields and dug rivers, summer’s tears.
Now all is over, and birds croak, frogs sing,
and a humble man in two ragged coats
stumbles out from under a bridge,
hand clutching a saved cigarette in a breast pocket.
Him we will always have with us,
and though we look away, and sleep in peace,
disrobe on drug-filled mattresses, never thinking of him,
he looks up to the impenetrable thickness
and, taking just two or three puffs,
wishes goodnight to the whole town, the whole world;
wherever you are sleeping, you receive him.