Night Atmos
That moment on a sleepless night
Whose darkness isn’t quite as pitch as tar,
All thanks to the full moon’s eerie light
That serves to point out where the shadows are –
That moment when its gloomy shaft
Is broken up by something on the wing,
And underscored by the whistling draught,
As the floorboards knock and the radiators sing –
That moment when a rustle sighs,
And somewhere else a big clock ticks too slow,
And the nearby buzz of courting flies,
And the distant screech of an owl, or maybe a crow –
That moment when we feel a chill,
And sense an electric tension in the air,
And it always takes an act of will
To tell ourselves there’s nothing really there –
