A View at 3 am

City night: few stars. Life
on other planets
is a speculative leap to boiling rock
on Mars and ice men skating
around Saturn’s rings.
Down here it’s almost
Halloween, with black and orange
decorations at the windows
and people coming close
to waking up in costumes
for a non-existent world.

David Chorlton is a European who became a longtime resident of Phoenix and has developed an interest in the wildlife of the West. He has a recent book with watercolors and poems featuring the local birds, The Flying Desert. Read other articles by David.