Day 117: Nocturne

Winter evenings are cosy evenings. Dark outside, fire-glow inside.

And better still, that lovely contented feeling of the late quiet hours of the night, where everything comes into its own realm. Which can only be appreciated at home alone, up late, when everyone is asleep, and time 'is a tick, a purr, a drop.'

Nocturne - Eavan Boland

After a friend has gone I like the feel of it:
The house at night. Everyone asleep.
The way it draws in like atmosphere or evening.

One-o-clock. A floral tea pot and a raisin scone.
A tray waits to be taken down.
The landing light is off. The clock strikes. The cat

comes into his own, mysterious on the stairs,
a black ambivalence around the legs of button-back
chairs, an insinuation to be set beside

the red spoon and the salt-glazed cup,
the saucer with the thick spill of tea
which scalds off easily under the tap. Time

is a tick, a purr, a drop. The spider
on the dining room window has fallen asleep
among complexities as I will once

the doors are bolted and the keys tested
and the switch turned up of the kitchen light
which made outside in the garden

an electric room - a domestication
of closed daisies, an architecture
instant and improbable.