Nightscape

Full moon hung on a blue-grey sky;
Trees in distance black against it;
Nothing moved in the clear air,
No night birds, no clouds to speak of.

The moon’s aura silvering the grey,
Cast light on the outbuildings,
Filled the yards with ghosts, shone
On the rubble roads and track-ways
Winding up my hill.

A horizon’s paper-thin edge cut the timeless night in two.

For a moment I heard soil and bedrock breathing;
The pale grey grass sighing as it grew.
I heard the wind die, the nearer leaves shivering
As if even they understood autumn would come
Before winter and its graveyard days.
I heard silence in the world, nothing else,
Only the heart-beat in my veins,
The high ringing of the years inside my head.

The stars, spittle of light thrown across heaven, were dimmed.

I heard my blood rushing, as if I was both river and water,
Echoing the swirling stream below this house.

Moonlight reflected from the surface of my turbulent skin,
Refracted memory scattered light through the arched prisms
My eyes had become.

Full moon, fat of face, judged nothing, looked down, dispassionate.

The light spilled and split. I turned its spectrum inwards
Banding everything I remembered in colour.
How could I have forgotten so many dreams in one lifetime;
To become dulled by reason, cynically persuaded by realism,
Wearied by my unremitting pursuit of truth?

The night was chill and heartless and the moon
Made no point, had no point of view.
Heaven, if I believed in it, remained neutral,
Indifferent to me at my open window.

I stared back at the full moon’s eyes: distant,
A topography of light and shadow. I smiled
For want of a better way to twist my face.
I felt the lonely darkness - coldly forbidding.

Solitary, like the moon and the abandoned stars,
I did not despair. I remembered all the colours
Scattered in the moment were with me here.

And the sky was clear and wide.

© BH, 2016

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There was a full moon and, for a brief second, it reminded me of other clear nights where the moonlight shut out the stars and, even in summer, the sky was cold and clear.

As it happens, I’ve been rebelling against rationality. Well, we have a world now where reason has been usurped by puff and spin. That just leaves a kind of dull obedience in its place. Sod off inspiration, likewise intuitive thought. Be reasonable, accept the claptrap you are sold while those who peddle it grate on, mad as a box of fish.

I just had a fancy for the restoration of colour in our thinking and the refreshing notion that feeling alone in the universe is a good way to try to sober up.