Those bloody foxes kept you up last night,
their mating cries that sound almost childlike,
though to you it sounded like a fight,
which gives me pause to wonder what it’s like
to wake at break of evening, live one’s life
within the dichromatic, silvered dark.
The scavengers live by the lingering whiff
of bin bags minus aromatic noise
from car exhausts, deodorants and spliffs.
We diurnals forget we’re the luddites
of the mainly nocturnal mammal clan,
we lend far too much credence to the eye.
But even when the foxy fox is done,
you’re startled by growling, deisel din,
dance music blasting from the parked up van,
unloading piles of tabloids two doors down,
the front page blurbs of love affairs and wars,
The Mail’s panic, the fury of the Sun,
the bawdy twinkle of the Daily Star.
Imagine if it went the other way,
and nocturnal ancestors never cared
to switch tactics and colonise the day.
Come sunset, we’d file into rush hour trains,
downing espressos as the blue sky fades
while reading from the front page of The Moon.