Night World
A fox yelps,
geese bark,
streaming overhead
in the small hours.
Who’s out there,
snuffling, foraging,
as we roost,
safe in a nest
of other birds’
plucked feathers?
A silent, scurrying rat,
an owl, gliding
after a reckless mouse.
Bats, taking late
flittering swoops
at summer heat’s
long insect feast.
This is the night watch,
roaming the neon
hours of half-light,
a choreography
of hide and seek.
Then a police siren,
distorted harmonics
peeling away
into silence.
And now a cat,
bringing home its trophy,
crossing daylight’s
thin threshold,
making morning.
Imogen Forster is a traveller and a translator from French, Spanish, Italian and Catalan, specialising in art history and fiction. She publishes short poems on-line, mainly haiku. She works with a group of colleagues at www.imogenforsterassociates.co.uk.