Night Fog

A heavy and damp night fog

Settles down sagging

All the lights of street lamp posts

Along the black asphalt pathway

There are dark mirrors of dirty water

Keeping their secrets

In colorless silence.

Inside the old houses shivering

The common people

Huddle underneath their blankets

Disguised as old lumps

Worn out figures of tired souls

Too unconscious to care

About days gone cold.

The witching hour passes unseen

As poor troubled minds

See their nightmares stumble

Into haunted imagination

Praying the sandman passes by

While modern vampires and werewolves

Draw straws for violating victims.

Up above this forbidding fog

The angels who cared

Fold their wings to surrender

Any hope of protection or salvation

The fallen one comes to collect

His prizes for indifferent faces

Sleeping in open invisible hells.

I listen to the wheel of time

Within my veins pulsing

Melancholy flows slowly by

Disease and death ravage my body

Even so, my will to live remains

Though they try to block out the Sun

The night fog I breathe is fading.

Copyright © 2021 Charles Edward York

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