The Quieting Night

I’m not the only one awake this morning at 3:00 a.m.
I barely hear the sound of neighbors
Their shared experiences, I imagine
Opinions about the present, about the future
The cadence of the conversation, punctuated with occasional laughs
I sense they’re at an age where the ladder’s top
Is something their sights are set upon
I’ve done the same, each wrung stacked upward
Young, young, young, young
I climbed each one ahead of them
Reached for passion and caught some along the way
Until I came, breathless to the top
That seat where everything lies out about you
The view of a 360 lay where visibility will be best
That smallest pause before the first step down the other side
Of old and older, the rungs falling away
The scene below me now of traffic lights going green, yellow, red
A confusion of commands, mostly for me
The Matson cranes and I staring out over a dark Pacific Ocean
With no horizon visible, although I know the line is there
A few steps down to go, my future fears and hopes
Compress and soon will disappear
Air between hands that clap as the curtain finally falls
The murmur of my fingers on the keyboard, the hum of mostly quiet
My descent steadying, the surer footing in the last steps left
Easy, the way now, my cuckoo clock cranks out
in a nighttime gone past three o’clock
That’s coming to an end