! ! Screensaver Poem by Michael Shepherd

It’s night. Across the Hudson River,
the New York skyline at its most
romantic: sprinkled in its wide white way
with office and apartment lights;
wispy night clouds add their movement,
setting off this jewelled velvet;
in the mid-ground, a fire-launch
throws a high and spotlit fountain
to assert that manmade beauty’s not forgotten,
and citizens may share this high-rise paradise..

The French, who have a knack for the poetic phrase,
might pin down in words this strange emotion
of a city seen at night – something
like ‘nostalgie de l’inconnu’ –
a nostalgia for the unknown…
paradoxical sweet yearning in
a thousand lighted windows behind which
humans like ourselves whom we will never meet
share our lives; in this still night scene
(the distant sounds but faintly heard,
though not on our saved screens)
elevated to the holy mystery of life;
the soundless magic of a nightclub
saxophone and wistful clarinet;
a rhapsody in moods of blue.