JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

Pre-dawn lies over the city

In a blanket of mist winking

Here and there from red to green and back

 

Ships in the bay lie anchored

In faint pools of light hardly breathing

The sounds of their ocean journeys

 

Waves lap slow, swish back to sleep

Against the edge of wakefulness

On the wharf the bins are empty

 

The last eyeless fish heads have been picked

By crows or carried off by cats to be eaten

At midnight in some guarded gutter     

 

Under streets the presses rumble, print

And fold as stacks are packed away

A new president has been chosen

 

The traffic lights blink on and off

Ships slumber, cats rest on garbage heaps

In four years nothing will change

The docks, the wharf, the cats will remain