NIGHT

Three a.m.

For the moment I have given up on sleep.
I am at peace, the night welcomes me with open arms.
The whole world is mine.
Yesterday is long gone, tomorrow is no more than the thinnest shadow of light just over the horizon.
There’s nothing on my mind to disturb my equilibrium.

I put down my novel, pick up the poetry anthology on my night table; read a favourite poem.

I decide to get up, draw the curtains and open the window wide.
The night air is balmy, it caresses my face tenderly.
The waning moon pierces the velvet sky, creating a silvery sheen above the deeper blackness of trees and the edge of the hills.
Bright Venus is in attendance.

All is still, all is silent.

As my spirit settles into the night, my eyes distinguish minute differences in the texture of the darkness, here and there a man-made light glimmers and the gentlest breeze shifts the tops of trees.

My ears become attuned to far-off sounds.
An owl hoots; there is an answering shriek from across the valley.
In a distant farmyard a dog barks briefly, disturbed perhaps by the call of a vixen.

I hear a hum, a delicate, yet deep-throated hum; like a blanket of sound covering all other sounds.
It is the river, flowing low after weeks of blue skies and no rain to fill its bed with new vigour.

The river carries my spirit and I become one with the night.