Good Night

Many ways to spell good night.

Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July
        spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes.
They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit.
Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue
        and then go out.

Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack
        mushrooming a white pillar.

Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi crying
        in a baritone that crosses lowland cottonfields
        to a razorback hill.

It is easy to spell good night.
                                     Many ways to spell good night.

Credit

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on July 4, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“Good Night” appeared in Smoke and Steel (Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1921).