Midnight Musings

The nocturnal silence is broken by a faint tinkle

Rousing me, but only just.

Was it a dream, or a reality?

Did my ears lift, like a dog's would?

Did my nose discern a new whiff?

Did I taste someone's lather in my milieu,

Or did the air warm up vaguely?

Or was it my fickle mind wiling me?

A doorbell or telephone which rang in that failing illusion

Or a call from that eerie companion of my exploits

Or my own shriek at a ghastly apparition?

The answers elude me, just as that dream

As my leaden eyelids lift to greet the darkness.

Was it a mugger, trying hands on a humble sum,

Creeping in through a window which clicked in the night?

Or the night-guard, his bane, a burly bloke

Cycling in khakis, waving his baton under the street-light?

Or was it the dog devising his reprisal

With a slice of iron in his fanged bite?

Or that tabby cat, with eight more lives

Giving the dog, another fanciful slight?

My eyes, ever so droopy, strive to stay unbarred

While under the breath I curse, the jingly nightly ward

Was it the wind flapping the dreamcatchers

And wind chimes out on the porch?

Or was it that woodpecker, wuking quietly

In that damp hollow trunk of birch?

Or was it an insect roosting with a thud

On the tin roof of the garden shed

Or burrowing deeper in the sack of seeds,

It was the mouse, the gardener's dread

It was something. Was it something?

The night is silent again.

Was it a motorcar, blaring her horn

As it zoomed past by on the road beside?

Was it a plane, soaring high among clouds,

Under the full-mooned, starry sky?

Was it a ship, sailing on a voyage,

In the azure and ample oceans and seas?

Or was it roar from a hidden dragon,

Spurting wild fires from his deeps?

The mysterious root of the sound now lost,

It was something, it was nothing

Welcoming the quiet, in the twilight

My eyes calmly shut again.