NOCTURNE Poem by Gregory O'Donoghue

Midnight. Only myself and a white-haired woman
have been set down at a dismantled rural station.
I watch her cross the tracks and fade
up a slope, vanish in a blur of conifers.

Lingering near the solitary building -
abandoned sandstone that tells me to move on,
that here is nowhere, that I'm travelling -
I listen, savouring the night stillness.

It is the aftertraces of flaring spirits
who've leapt after diminishing carriages,
it must be these making the quietness quicken.

And I'm numbed a moment at seeming to see
the snow-haired woman returning; it's only
a chalky cat stealing in a crouch across
the moonlight, unless I am doubly mistaken.