Originally written in 2003

A traffic light late at night,
red, seems so pale and dim;
it fades into the darkness.
What might seem an angry admonition,
“STOP!” loses its exclamation,
an empty sputtering.
Stop or ignore, it doesn’t matter;
there’s no traffic anyway.
Its power is subsumed,
swallowed in the night.

Green, though—
green is red’s converse in every way.
“Go, go,” it breathes softly,
bathing the car in its seductive glow.
It beckons sotto voce:
forward, accelerate, seek no counsel.
It promises safe passage
without ever quite saying the words,
and if the car wrecks,
well, no one can say the light lied.
A promise written in photons
can’t be counted on.