Lake at Night & Other Poetry

By Rowland Hughes

Featured in our New Lyre Winter 2024 issue.

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Lake At Night

It is not night’s shadows I fear,
but your mirror stillness, holding captive 
a fallen sky.
Your moon, sitting centre to a halo of stars,
beckons me to its prominent light.

Perhaps the stars are stepping stones,
and strong enough to hold my weight.
But your moon is printed on dark water,
pretending to be real,
pretending to be my night companion.

Or perhaps I could fly to your moon;
it would flare in a short explosion of light,
like a firebird trapped in a glass dome.
But the flames will die,
and your moon will return to perfection.

Without me, would you even exist?
You are a looking glass,
but my image is nowhere to be seen.
If I were to close my eyes and sleep,
would you be searching for another soul?

You are the night sky, the universe, 
taking up all the space inside my head.
There is only you, 
the hills have vanished into the shadows
of their making.

And there is no sound from the trees;
their night whispers silenced by a sleeping wind.
Or maybe they no longer exist,
and are buried in the graveyard below the sky 
you so cleverly portray.

Shortly, the sun will take away night’s image,
when the moon and stars in your universe
will be hidden behind a curtain of light.
Children will kick at your boundaries,
where sunlight will struggle to survive.

But this night, you belong to me.
Your monochrome landscape is leaking
into the surreal world that surrounds me.
Will you guide me into your sky’s attic,
where all memories and dreams are kept safe?