Night Flight – a poem by David Chorlton

Night Flight

Two hours of the year to go
and one step from the back door into darkness.
Quiet except
                      for trial fireworks as the mountain
counts down. Time on a tightrope.
Across the wash a few windows
still awake and streetlamps on their toes
straining for a view into the future.
There’s an owl
                           perching in the yard
and when her moment comes
she flies at barely shoulder height,
dipping first then rising,
on the way
                   to where spirits meet
with a wingspan twelve months wide.

David Chorlton lived in Manchester and Vienna before moving to Arizona and beginning to learn from the desert and its creatures. He occasionally returns to his other long term pursuit of painting. The Bitter Oleander Press published his book Dreams the Stones Have in 2024.