Poem for Today

When Day Sleeps
When the sun has long since lain to rest,
closing the chapter on another day,
when blackbird, crow, and mistle-thrush,
have homeward sped their weary way,
they sleep, leaving the darkness to the owl,
who rests and watches all with baleful stare;
and to the scurrying beetle and the silent bat,
the other world of creatures hidden there.
As the fox steps from his hidden earth
to watch the silver moon, he cries in anger
lest shadows should betray his presence,
calling to victims of impending danger.
When the gentle waters of the lake ripple
in soft response to the hum of evening breeze,
and the babbling music of the stream
calls endlessly to shadowed trees.
When man, at last, has crept into his bed,
snuffed the candle, turned the light,
there comes a different world of night.
A world that echoes joyfully the cricket’s song,
where fireflies dance and weave in eerie glow,
and roosting cockerel waits for dawn,
to sing when light begins to show,
opening the curtains on another day.
© 1976 Colin Gordon-Farleigh