Waking The Dark (Poetry)

Night settles on the forest.
Darkness stretching plump
and noiseless as a well-stuffed cushion
propped against elderly dozing pines.
What snores there might have been
suppressed — damped down
like a mass of clouds breathing —
imagined too shallow to be heard.

Sleep unrolls its borderless country
where even trees might dream
of migrating south with the birds —
warm sapful fantasies
of following the sun —
evolving a new strategy
to keep ahold of young
wind-fickle leaves.

The nightflyers come. Quick shadows
swooping through on soundless wings
big-eyed with many hungers
swallowing the heavy pungent air
disturbing its thick-grown comfort
and triggering one small feathered alarm.
A screech that sends a jarring note
to set on edge the whole awoken dark.