Nighthawks, by Alexander Lazarus Wolff

Nighthawks, by Edward Hopper (USA) 1942

Nighthawks

Midnight again. I came here last Thursday,
and the Thursday before, and so to my grave.
The couple—lady of crimson 
and man of gray—talk only about their latest
purchases: new washing machine, teal fridge;
not about their foreclosure.
                                                      And I, 
bowler hat propped just above eyes and ears, 
sink into hours when light evades dawn and dusk. 
Now silent, the couple gives vacant witness to
the server stacking plates. I hear the street’s
murmurs, the ragged sigh of the man…

At one point, my wife and I would swim
by our lake house, water lacquered 
like this cherry wood counter. No stale air:
the cigarette smoke that lingers here;
no empty shopfront. We had rural New York,
our property that spread capacious across 
lake and lush hills. But that was years ago.

Here in the diner, a pane of glass seals us off. 
Soft light dissolves before it can touch night.

Alexander Lazarus Wolff
​
​Alexander Lazarus Wolff's writing appears online in The Best American Poetry website and Poets.org, and in the North American Review, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere. A recipient of an Academy of American Poets prize, he teaches at the University of Houston where he is the Inprint MD Anderson Foundation Fellow and assistant poetry editor for Gulf Coast. You can read more of his work at www.alexanderlazaruswolff.com.