Nightsong

The room is dark
The clock drags the sleepless minutes
Over the hump of midnight
And onto the long gentle slope to morning.

I listen to the big river of the wind
Splashing round the house and Frothing over nearby trees.

My thoughts tug at their moorings,
Straining against the long cords of consciousness;
Longing to catch some eddie of the air and fly.

I try to let them go,
Try to cut them free
But they are thick and strong and,
Twisted with anxiety.

The darkness rumbles in the wind,
The house creaks like an arthritic barge straining against the flow
And the taut thoughts hum like a tuned string,
Waiting to accompany the morning song of birds.

(c) A.McN

Machinery

I awoke and the night was silent,
save for the rumble of the machine.

A steady thump of the engine ticking over in the darkness;
a scarcely perceptible rush of fluid in the pipes and the hum of static in the circuitries..

I lie awake listening to its softly pulsing purposeness.
Only at night do I notice its presence;
the day is brash and loud and
deftly drowns all other sounds;
but silent night peels every other noise away until..
the old familiar engine throb returns to haunt my wandering thoughts.

Who owns this engine?
Who maintains it?
How long will it run?
Why is it here, beating time like a metronome within?

Even as I write it rumbles on..
auricle and ventricle,
artery and vein
ebb and flow;
breath and blood.

How did the engine engineer itself
and switch the circuits on?
And when did the first
faint flicker of the
dream of living
dance inside
my foetal form?


(c) A Mc N