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.