A Nighttime

Autumn - 12 Midnight

These things are leaves:
daytime hours; the actual leaves of autumn;
our working clothes, and faces,
and thoughts too often worked upon;
the daily treats that little money will allow;
the golden copper we treat as currency.

But all of these have fallen now,
all proved unimportant,
and from the bed of leaves formed there
the night is growing - first begging caution
but soon spreading boughs,
shoots, branches, new sets of leaves;
all fertilised by daytimes' weakness,
by sunlight's inconsistencies,
and that in us which is, with night, released.


Summer - 2am

It's summer: dark now,
but fever blanket hot.

Summer, and it lounges everywhere,
covering the empty cot, or slumping into empty corners,
or just haunting, crooked shouldered, my window.
It's burn is on my face and arms.

The sky has long been bruised to black,
but my eyes well know the season
and are shot through with its reds,
its oranges, its boiling greens.

In the emptiness of heat we're released,
or bend, to relax.


Spring - 4am

It's in these silent lovers' minutes,
as people sleep, that slowly, softly,
the night comes,
quiet and gently feminine.

The velveteen-skinned stomach,
that at this time forms the sky,
contracts, almost seems to gasp, then
with a sigh, is released, and settles,
all almost imperceptible, but I
I, who have watching,
understanding and recording,
am allowedto be smothered, relaxed; to be surrounded,
overcome, and to dissolve.

And for a moment,
everything is backward and correct.


Winter - 6am

The air seems somehow solid, now,
it separates the houses
and the horizon,
and it separates the people in between.

The divide is dry and clean, and as I watch,
so I see: the sky supports two trees,
huddled for warmth, and touching leaves
against a yellowing horizon.