Night Visits

Don’t come to me now, in the small dark hours.

Don’t make me lie here guilty and desperate

to wring you out of the black void echoing

behind my forehead, weighing against eyelids

and jockeying for position amongst the unseen

nocturnal events familiar but anonymous:

a passing car, the settling crack of old timbers

in out of beat accompaniment of digestive tracts

and diaphragms of slumbering souls; an urge to pee,

and pangs of hunger and anxiety and wondering

how the two hundred swans in the field beyond

Langdale Copse will spend such hours as this.

And now I’m floating along the landing descending

and fumbling for a pencil, desperate to capture you.

Don’t come to me now you fleeting words, not now,

for we both know you’ll be gone in the morning.

John H Davies

16th January 2011