Lunch With the Sole Survivor

Meaning what it seems to when the day's receipts are
       counted and locked inside the store and the 
       keys are taken home
   feeling as it does to drive a car that rides and rides like
       a long, low, dark, silent streak of radio waves
   just the way the hero feels in a smash-hit show
   exactly like the giant in a Times Square sign making
       love across the sky to a lady made of light
	   
And then as though the switch were thrown and all of 
       the lights went out
   then as though the curtain fell and then they swept
       the aisles and then it's someone's turn to go
   smoke the last cigarette, drink the last tall drink, go
       with the last long whistle of the midnight train
       as it fades among the hills
	   
Meaning what it seems to mean but feeling the way it 
       does
   as though the wind would always, always blow away
       from home.

From Kenneth Fearing: Selected Poems, edited by Robert Polito. Originally appeared in The Complete Poems by Kenneth Fearing, published by the National Poetry Foundation. Reprinted by the permission of Russell & Volkening, Inc., as agents for the author. Copyright © 1936 by Kenneth Fearing, renewed in 1974 by the Estate of Kenneth Fearing. All rights reserved.