Sneakin' out late

Through the parted lips of a barely open window the tongue of the cool evening air slips in. It has brought the last few drops of curlew call and licks them into your pillow. The day, roaring drunk on a bellyful of birdsong, stumbles into the deep water of darkness and is drowned in bliss. Night falls.

Hurry now. The door will soon close. The lock will be turned until morning. Sleep, the nightwatchman, is on his rounds. 'Lights out!' he proclaims, all backside and bluster. Then settles to his crossword. Are we to live half our lives in dreams, then, eyes fluttering like moths behind the drawn shutters of our face? Or do we still sense the candle's flame, and long for it?

Ah, for sure, there'll be time enough to sleep. When the silt of one last great flood finally renders the tug-boat channels of our backwater lives unnavigable. But not tonight. Tonight a toad is waiting on the backdoor step, tapping his fob watch. We are late, apparently. He masticates the silence with a sticky slap of his liverish saliva. Blinks, but rarely. Speaks seldom. He turns away and waistcoat-waddles down the garden path. Leaping is for the frogs. Follow him. Quickly now. Slip into the shadows like an old coat. Who knows what's been left in the pockets.

In a deep-hollow elbow of Tinkling Beck a crayfish is doing stand-up, cracking dirty jokes with the pairs of pliers god gave him. The minnows are aghast. The trout at the ticket agency should have said. They skitter back to their respectable parlours under the alder roots and cover their ears. With carefully cupped hands. Their little bellies billowing with bottled-up laughter. Mayfly nymphs from the cleaning company brush the titters under the carpet.

In the bombazine black beneath the bottom field, a pair of moles are swimming breaststroke in the jealously guarded lanes of a public pool. With the podgy hands of children who have played too long in the snow. As tight in their tunnels as toothpaste. The river-rich loam slips over their non-stick fur like eggs in a pan. They have solved the old conundrum, eating their pink spaghetti worms with neither fork nor spoon. Napkins are as superfluous as socks. Moles never spill the sauce.

Across the two-way mirror of the smutty sky the reflection of a male woodcock beats the bounds. His chat-up lines are as old as moonlight, as fresh as harebell blue. He says he lives in hope. Doesn't like to boast, but there's a glint in his eye.

Stars begin to wriggle. Time is on her break. She pretends to read the paper but daydreams of supernovas. Space is a button accordion which sucks and blows but has forgotten the tune.

Float on the river of the night, face-up. Let an eddy waltz you around, spinning as gently as a feather falls. Somewhere out in the current a twig of immortality is passing you by. Let it pass. The twig is bound for a nameless ocean. We have a date with the dawn.

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