Along the crescent, in the middle of the night,
a hooded figure minces, its tight step
in bondage to its low-slung jeans. It looks along
its shoulder at the road, and then I see
the green glow from the mobile phone
held like a talisman against the dark –
against the loneliness of being young
as other figures seem to taunt
by being three instead of one.
And hidden at the window I observe
this interplay of darkness and of threat
as distant voices call and jeer
and music snatches at the air
in this, the hour of midnight lives
before the silence of the dawn.
