October
Evening
I
am standing in the garden.
The
chill of dusk gathers,
And
Id the ghost slides by,
Its
shadow captured briefly
Against
the disappearing wall.
The
air is cold and filtered
Like
the last light that escapes the moon
And
lingers in puffs and blows
Around
the whispering, skeletal leaves,
And
soft, silent earth.
Now
Id the ghost formlessly appears
And
ranges through the space
That
daylight left behind;
It
whirls and plays and swings,
Delighting
in absence.
It
darts into wide plains of memory
And
rustles in dim, empty corners,
Roaming
and brushing through tired verdure;
And
I strain to see or hear,
And
shyly, Id the ghost retreats.
There
is hardly any time left;
Just
the lacunae
Between
light and life and dark,
Ticking
between damp blades of grass,
And
stirrings made savage by blindness,
For
it is night; the portents changed.
To
see or hear is different, and to feel
While
trapped within the claustrophobic gloam
Hurts
and cuts and stabs at
The
fragile layer of evening that protects.
And Id the ghost must leave;
For
now the moon is claiming back its light.
It
is the hour when time changes and dictates
The
mood and the direction;
The
knell of dark is fallen all around.
Melanie
Brown
Formerly the
Composer-in-Residence with the National Chamber Choir of Ireland, Melanie Brown
was a professor of Identity Politics at Trinity College Dublin before her
current appointment as Senior Examiner at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. Her
freelance journalistic work has been published in the Irish Times, the Sunday
Times and Journal.ie, and she is part of the Terenure Writers Group, Dublin.
She sings with the National Symphonic Chorus of Ireland, and the Christ Church
Cathedral Community Choir. Her hobbies include gardening and wine-making (from
the produce of her efforts as a gardener).