Night Creatures

Those who work in the dark — Work Prompt

They work in the dark, often after toiling in the light, knowing nothing but what is at hand, what needs to be done in the shadows — making, arranging, destroying, bending, breaking, creating, baking, cleaning, loading, unloading, stacking, driving, dancing, singing, undressing, all for someone else and for the coins that no longer jingle and the bills, folded and sweaty, and the numbers on paper telling your worth, your place, your meaning as a Night Creature — out-of-sync, out of the way, out when others are in, never rested enough, never fresh enough, a step, an hour, a life behind.

We are blind to them, blind in the darkness that holds them, blind to the work they do out of sight, out of our sight in the night.

Until they emerge, bleary at dawn, road maps of work in their eyes — they board trains and sleep, they drive cars, trying not to sleep, too tired to eat, too tired to care another day has come.

Now we see them, rumpled, wrinkled, weary, stumbling in the bright, and wonder if they’re drunk or high or unstable, for they aren’t like us, these Night Creatures who live in the shadows, who work in the dark.

Inspired by Night Movement by Carl Sandburg via PoemHunter.com:

Night Movement-New York

by Carl Sandburg

In the night, when the sea-winds take the city in their arms, And cool the loud streets that kept their dust noon and afternoon; In the night, when the sea-birds call to the lights of the city, The lights that cut on the skyline their name of a city; In the night, when the trains and wagons start from a long way off For the city where the people ask bread and want letters; In the night the city lives too-the day is not all. In the night there are dancers dancing and singers singing, And the sailors and soldiers look for numbers on doors. In the night the sea-winds take the city in their arms.

And, in response to the Work Prompt by David S.: