Only after dark

Only after dark

When the weft of night is thick

With uncertainty

Is there a peculiarity

In the sound of intermittent silence,

Of darkness woven in discord

The chime of a clock

Three floors up

Taking its time to disrupt dreaming

The woosh of an Owl too close

To the window

The brush of a wing snapping

As loudly as a dry stick on a forest floor

Nocturnal animals scurry

In a hurry to plunder ripe fruit

From an overhanging branch

Bouncing against the eaves

Monsters in shadow play

Heavy breathing from within

Echoes of another day

Playing with your memory

Of life before yesterday

When nothing can be undone

How cruel is darkness

When there is not even a pinprick

To show the way

Waiting on tenterhooks

For the first sign of a break

In the agony of rumination

Feigning disinterest,

As silence is consumed

By a growing bloom of sunlight,

With its familiar expectation

Of reprieve

Darkness curled up into a ball

Dozing in a corner

One eye on the clock

A watching brief

Waiting on its ascendance