Cat walks

Cat walks

Cat walks
where she will
though the night is dark.
I hear a fox bark.

Where she will
is the trackless field,
silent and full of eyes,

though the night is dark.
Warm blood pulses,
the tread of silent paws,

I hear a fox bark.
Cat pays no heed,
the arc of the house hers.

Another night

Another night

Another night
after the rain
has doused the sun

stars
like raindrops
dimple the celestial puddle.

Sometimes night

Painting Edvard Munch.

Sometimes night

Sometimes night comforts
with its dark sheltering wing
and only pale stars for light.
Forgetfulness murmurs
a gentle lullaby and sleep.

Raven-night

Raven-night

About this house,
night folds dark wings,
rough-feathered, cold,

and through the window glass,
a single star, raven-eye, blinks.

Frost crisps, and I cannot tell
if we are kin or prey.

A lover

• 

A lover

In the hanging trees, the shrivel-fruit are dark
as no-moon and bitter as sloes, black the shadows,
pinched, a dead hand’s grip.

Through the leaf-rustle I wade
though briar’s cruel canes bar the way,
fox tracks too low, too narrow for me to pass,

and the air moves above my head
in feathered waves of startled pigeons,
clattering from their roost.

They tell me I will find you on the bald hill,
rabbit-cropped turf, dark beneath the no-moon,
where the owls sing to lure the stars.

They tell me I may not like what I find,
but still I take the cold path, no choice but to follow,
though your only sweetness be lilies.

Waiting for the moon

• 

Waiting for the moon

I’ll stand and wait for moonrise,
the rising of the light,
the silvering of meadows,
the darkening of night,
to hear the owl song echoing
among the spindle trees,
to hear the owl song echoing,
his soft voice in the breeze.

When veils of rain have fallen
into the arms of night,
I’ll stand and wait for moonrise,
the growing of the light
and listen for the owl’s song
among the darkling trees,
among the silver branches,
stirred by a silver breeze.

And will you wait here with me
while silver laps the hedge,
a tide of misty moonlight
is a sea where feathers fledge?
Our fingers joined like heartbeats,
the beating of pale wings
plays in silver fluting moonlight
such songs as the night bird sings.

Night is here again

Night is here again,
dark as ever, dark as Hades
and full of rain.

The light returns tomorrow
so they say, the ones who know,
who measure the turning of the earth
through standing stones

and the stories coursing in their blood
of death and birth,
and how the sunrise hits a smooth stone
in a chamber set into a hill.

Night is here again.
That’s all I know.

Goodnight moon

at the end of the day

we can only say the day is ended

the sun has set

and in the whispering of the leaves

is the promise of tomorrow

 

tomorrow begins with the dark

and the moon’s course across the sky

the patterings and scufflings among the grasses

the hunting owls

and the dropping dew

 

dew prefigures frost

the silver veiling of the earth

paling of the green

and trembling tree shadows

to the colour of moonlight

 

moonlight bathes

the meadow is awash

and the day has ended in the night ocean

I sail sunwards

clutching my promise of tomorrow

night talk

 

all day long the thrushes sing

and in the night the owls

play ghost with one another

among the swaying trees

 

beneath the cold stars winking

their feathery tremolo rolls

and bright-eyed mice count frightened

heartbeats hard as sunflower seeds

 

among damp night stalks trembling

foxes walk and badgers growl

while I listen to the moonlight-

darkened voices of the wild

 

breathe the musky scent of tree bark

and the rolling dewy grasses

where they walk and we would follow

ghosts all in the dusky night

 

A poem I wrote today and have finished up for the dverse prompt.

Purblind

Tonight it seems as though the sky,

the heavy drapery diamond-stitched,

waveless, waterless ocean where ice

is formed and falls in flakes

of chiselled chaff, is blue as day,

the light turned off and curtains drawn.

The light turned off and curtains drawn,

purblind we cower beneath

the trembling shadow-wings

of its monumental dark majesty.