Halflife, a collection of poems by Meghan O'Rourke

~
The blue square of light
in the window across the street
never goes dark--

the cathodes, the cordage, the atoms
working the hem of dusk--
traveling past the cranes and the docks

and the soiled oyster beds, 
the trees loaded with radium, 
colors like guns, 

. . . 

I came through the sodium streets
past the diners, a minister idly turning his glass, 
service stations, gas, cars sharp in the light.

How long will the light go on?
Longer than you.  Still you ought to live like a city, 
rich and fierce at the center.

--From "Halflife," a poem by Meghan O'Rourke, first published in the magazine Poetry (September 2005) and reprinted in her collection Halflife (W.W. Norton & Company, 2007), pp. 23-24.