Alone on the urban highway, he drives

Amid a subthreshold constellation

Of front porches and shining monoliths

About two times his customary size

The vacant lanes arouse elemental

Imaginings: "I could swerve to and fro

In this expanse, and who would know?"

But he does not, the threat of some

Insomniac authority burning

Brighter still. Instead, he parks, disembarks,

And leaves the car like everything is right

And walks into the geometric light

Through concrete gardens, shaped with cunning skill

Illumined so his automatic brain

Assumes it's afternoon, while, in the sky

A firefly announces to the eye

Just how ethereal the edifice--

At his unsure fluorescing yellow gutter

The brainstem gives involuntary shudder