Night Walk

Night Walk

We have banished darkness
almost entirely from our world
and so this night is not black
but grey, cloud-shrouded
warm and specked with rain.

The scents are stronger
than daylight allows; the reeds
are thick and marshy
against the clinical eucalypt, and I need
not tell you of the smell of rain on hot pavement.

Orange streetlight lies
smeared across the unrippling lake
and graced with sparks of green
and blue; the houses still wear
their LED garlands for Christmas.

Restless waterbirds splash
and squabble with the rainsong
clustered on the water, their white heads
oddly luminescent
in reflected orange light
which ignores their darker feathers.

The traffic’s distant, a susurrus
not unwelcome, almost as steady
as the shrilling cicadas, the frogs’ commentary
and the graceless squeaking
of my feet in plastic shoes.

The path is polished
in the rain sheen, a mirror
of curving branches against the sky
trembling slightly
or dissolving around my steps.

The world
holds me gently at its centre
for a precious hour, boundless
wet, quiet, true
before I return
to the limits of a small and yellow space.