AT THE END OF DAY

 

A hush falls over the city streets

As the fog rolls in from the fishing bay.

A stray moonbeam spotlights a lonely old man

Still casting his line, still dreaming away.

 

In his left hand he clenches a silver canteen

Filled with coffee or liquor, nobody can say.

Maybe he’s taken his hopes off the shelf

And in that canteen, he’s stored them away.

 

He shivers with cold as the fir that he wore

Slips down to the dock in decay.

That concrete, the scaffold he mounts every night

Is a damned horrid place of dismay.