2:12 a.m. 2001-04-09
A woman standing on the rough, clean carpet just inside the door of her motel room sets her suitcase down silently and wonders if, perhaps, she is dying.
A man waiting for his food at a restaurant by the side of the road at 4 a.m., on the way from nowhere west to nowhere southeast, watches the waitress's hair gently escape the ponytail at her neck and wonders whether he could fall in love with her.
A man, alone and working late, rounds the corner of the hall outside his office, looks at the faded old wallpaper in the decaying building and thinks about when he used to dream about flying.
A woman suddenly shivering as she enters the grocery store she went to because she couldn't sleep, feet in old tennis shoes and a t-shirt covering her breasts, meets the briefest of glances from a checkout boy and feels strangely comforted.
People need not to be alone.
Poem to be Read at 3 A.M.
By Donald Justice
Excepting the diner
On the outskirts
The town of Ladora
At 3 A.M.
Was dark but
For my headlights
And up in
One second story room
A single light.
Where someone was sick
Or perhaps reading
As I drove by at seventy
Not thinking.
This poem is for
Whoever left the light on.
A woman standing on the rough, clean carpet just inside the door of her motel room sets her suitcase down silently and wonders if, perhaps, she is dying.
A man waiting for his food at a restaurant by the side of the road at 4 a.m., on the way from nowhere west to nowhere southeast, watches the waitress's hair gently escape the ponytail at her neck and wonders whether he could fall in love with her.
A man, alone and working late, rounds the corner of the hall outside his office, looks at the faded old wallpaper in the decaying building and thinks about when he used to dream about flying.
A woman suddenly shivering as she enters the grocery store she went to because she couldn't sleep, feet in old tennis shoes and a t-shirt covering her breasts, meets the briefest of glances from a checkout boy and feels strangely comforted.
People need not to be alone.
Poem to be Read at 3 A.M.
By Donald Justice
Excepting the diner
On the outskirts
The town of Ladora
At 3 A.M.
Was dark but
For my headlights
And up in
One second story room
A single light.
Where someone was sick
Or perhaps reading
As I drove by at seventy
Not thinking.
This poem is for
Whoever left the light on.
Labels: lonliness, poetics, spirit of the age
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