Autumn, the Nightwalk, the City, the River

Autumn, the Nightwalk, the City, the River

Autumn, the Nightwalk, the City, the River

How early the autumn seemed to have come that year,
the drizzles like moods, the tightness in the air.
Walking was different: nervous, brisker now
under the streetlights’ tangerine conic glow;
needing gloves and scarves. I had both,
And a raincoat pulled up tight around my mouth.
Direction never mattered on those streets.
Once I walked all night and called it quits
somewhere miles from home, then caught the first
bus back. What mattered was being lost.
Anywhere would do: I remember suburbs
plush with hatchbacks parked on tidy kerbs,
Privets, cherry blossoms, nouveaux riches’
houses named for saints, complete with cable dishes;
and then the streets where every window was
an iron grid across its pane of glass,
the garden weeds in cracks, a noise ahead –
a bird, a cat – enough to make me cross the road.
Any light was harsh: all-night Spars
and the lit façades of Georgian squares
I’d hurry past; headlights glared like search-
beams in their hurtling, quizzical approach.
But landmarks were always a magnet. I’d be out
for hours – in sight of open fields – and spot
a pub or spire I knew, then find myself
being led by it, with inarticulate relief,
back in. Home was defeat but consolation too,
reassurance there was nowhere else to go.
The clubs all shut, town was deserted all over:
the only living thing would be the river;
and one night following it, I got a sense
of how, if anything did, it left the dead-ends
of the place behind as, sleek as a dream,
past barracks, churches, courts, the lot, it swam,
the lights that danced on its surface so many jack-
o’-lanterns promising no going back,
for it at least if not for me. I followed it
all the way to the quay-end steps and sat
as long as I thought it would take to reach the last buoy
and from there, dry land forgotten, the open sea.