The night is never silent

by

Mike Toohey

Email: miketoohey_uk@yahoo.co.uk

Strange, how the night is never silent.

That clock ratchets forward one second per second;

car tyres sigh on wet roads; and the gusts

on patrol check my windows are shut tight.

Long past midwinter midnight, these hours are stacked

as loose as deckchairs on last summer's beach,

and my eyes are bee-stung with fatigue. Then

out in the grey-leaf garden, a bird sings.

The song not strong or memorable –

a piccolo run - a trill - a trill - a pause.

But after the days of famine, and the nights

shaken in the distraught arms of trees,

after the sun slipping home before curfew

and the raising of each night's tyrannical dome –

sung now, it seems a brave and dissident thing.

As if to say: you cannot live on bread

alone, but on insouciance too. The song

fades, of course; the earth proceeds. I sleep,

hoping to find in the snowdrop beds today

communiqués informing me of spring.

©2001 Mike Toohey

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