Orange Streetlights

Outside my bedroom window

proudly stand a row of orange streetlights.

They’re so warmly and electrically orange, little orbs of the Sun incarnate gently screwed into placeholders of strong metal.

It rains, and it rains angrily, with ferocity monotony has made me forget

Had ever existed.

The rain carries the artificial golden glow a little further, so that nothingness is illuminated,

If only just for a couple metres,

With ceremonious orange

I say to the streetlights,

‘I think your curves are quite creative,

Your outside so starkly different from your in.

I think, dear streetlights, you are all quite special,

The way you stand so stoically and so in sync.’

And these streetlights, powered by the genius of Nikola Tesla and collated funds from resentful taxpayers, give guidance upon slabs of unsure concrete.

They call out,

‘This is the way!

Follow the beams of me and my sisters!

For we reveal the quiet truth that exists in darkness.

You have nothing to fear when you are under our care,

Other than your own shortcomings.’

My dear streetlights, thank you for getting my sister home safe every night.

And shutting off during the day.

In a way you are trees!

Powered by treasures resting deep under the soil, and timed by the suns rays!

Man tried to imitiate the might of the trees by replicating them with silver trunks and leaves that glow.

For Mankind is inspired by nature, in love with nature, utterly infatuated with nature,

Yet sometimes they don’t realise so.

Under you, young drivers hands shake

Whilst Lovers’ hands lock

And friends head together sway,

To bops and hits blaring with their windows down,

Singing gentle, cool tones from ‘09

When times were simply simpler.

I hate how Nostalgia often walks into me without any warning.

No amount of tangerine streetlights could warn me of its ugly presence.

Nostalgia sits next to me, strokes my curls and begins to tell me tales of how old friends noses’ would scrunch when they laughed,

And palms furiously sweat when they were nervous

And the wishful promises they all made of ceremonial gazing of the stars

And the soothing of any and all scars.

And I wince and I squirm and I sit on my hands as I listen

But I dare not tell Nostalgia to stop!

Because it feels so good to recline into

Softer dimensions of in which we were taller.

My dear streetlights, although it brings me great sorrow to say,

I cannot wait to get away from your light pollution,

So that I, on a deep spring night may,

Rest my burdened back on soil atop a distant cliff

And watch the shine of the stars

from which your creation was inspired

To watch your predecessors gleam and glow and glisten,

And closely listen to all that they have to say.

Alas! I think of all the times I will soon ask you to hold my hand

As I drive into lateness and lostness.

What adventures will I be making,

What grueling decisions will I be taking,

As I tap and fiddle with the wheel in perfect harmony and thought?

What songs will I be singing and with what passion pr pain fuelling my opera?

Where will I be going? Expecting what or whom on the other end?

Although you are completely still, with you I shall be moving!

Travelling and toiling, urging with journey and rush or cruising with calm,

Realising that the world is my oyster and my highway and my Alps,

I can drive wherever and with whoever whenever,

But it is within your loving, warm, orange embrace,

That I will always find my back home.