Night Ride (Poetry)

Our footsteps echo, over-loud,
and trigger waves akin to fright
as hulking shadows loom and crowd
the wet and windy lanes of night.

The engine coughs; the tyres spin —
throw up a crunching gravel spray;
our headlights cast a beam too thin
for comfort as we pull away

into the bluster, damp and wild,
with sudden squalls and flocks of leaves
flung headlong or on verges piled
like lost, migrating refugees.

The white line on the road unrolls,
unbroken in the gleaming black,
we follow, trusting that our goals
exist beyond the unlit map

and speed on through this land of sleep —
the villages and shuttered towns,
rain-washed, silent, folded deep
in drizzle’s patchwork eiderdowns.

No lights but ours, all buildings blind
and lifeless as we motor past,
unobserved, and leave behind
each flash gun image, fading fast.

Beside the road, the dripping hedge
bends with every gusting blow,
the wipers squeak, their blades on edge
and frantic, waving to and fro.

Beneath our wheels, the tarmac slides,
while landscapes slip away, unseen,
and random signs emerge as guides
to mark the travelled miles between.