Cowal Games: Midnight

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.