Night jars

Day descends
As we descend the
Stumbling hillside, dark
With gorse and broom.
Voices lower, whisper, cease, as steps
Grow cautious, hover, become still.

Wait. Listen. Breathe.

White orchid, luminous, rises out
From the gloom of dusk, distracts
From the strain of aching to hear.
So, unsought, barely registered, 
A faint new sound creeps from shadows .

They move invisible up from the valley,
Calling unseen from scrub and bracken.
They thrill the air. We are caught;
Transfixed, alert,
Skewered by sound.

Against a sky that reels
From peach to turquoise,  wrapped in night,
One arcs upward, coasts, swoops,
Swings and folds to right and left,
Dives into darkness, rises to light:
Swirling master of the night air.
Magician of dusk, and all the spaces
Between night and day.
Flash of white. A call that
Seeps in like the shiver of cold air.

Night falls.
Night bewitches.
Night jars.

Thanks, Jo Lear, for the photos. I don’t know how you did it!