The street lamp was shrouded. A night of slashing rain
driving across black wind,
rattling over steamed glass;
light ran away in fear along
hungry gutters,
gurgling down dark drains; light
spread a mist, spinning
under hissing tyres, showering
sparked fire.
Near her time, the journey was
urgent, compulsive;
a brief pause, then plunging
slithering from the kerb,
slipping into swirling, thrusting
underwater;
steadying her spread feet on the
queasy tarmac,
she set off in a series of dead
slow heart-beats,
so heavy slow across the
indifferent road.
A screaming car swung down,
scattering sticky leaves.
Dead? She lay motionless. Head down, plunging through fear,
I lifted her - ice-cold, slippery,
stupefied;
then wet webbed toes, frantic,
flickered in my palm.
Creeping up a fern-deep path, I
set her aching down
in a tangled mass of crying
periwinkle.
But she had the journey still to
go, compulsive.
A night of slashing rain, of
hunting night-blind cars,
of a street lamp, shrouded. And what more could I do?
(March,
1991)
