- By Rowland Hughes
Last Light

The last moment of sunshine
dribbles from the watering-can.
The moon, hunchback on a cloud,
gathers its borrowed light,
as the blackbird’s song is lost in
a net of stars.
The apple-tree, charcoal drawn
against an ocean sky,
disturbs the quiet of a warm wind.
Dusk unwinds the spider’s web,
a window light dips and rises
on a shadow wave of flowers.
Terracotta pots stacked in a black
lit corner, the climbing rose fades
to a child’s scribble on a dark wall.
Night rolls its carpet of unseeable
ground, removing boundaries
until confines are infinite,
yet the sky’s distance shrinks
to an arm’s length and a bat circles
the universe with tissue paper wings.
Rowland Hughes is a Welsh writer and poet. He was born, and lived until his late teens, in the Rhondda Valley, from where he still draws most of his inspiration. He worked as a Master Decorator and studied trades in the construction industry. He later became a Local Authority Assistant Surveyor. Due to ill health, he retired in 1997. In 1998, he joined a Cardiff University Creative Writing Group. He loves to observe people, places and nature, writing in bustling cafés and the confines of his writing shed.