a nightingale sang in Berkeley square

There's a particular kind of night.

It's like this, see.

There's been rain in the air. Good and proper rain, summer storm rain that beats on the car roof or damp English town rain, of shining guttering and boots and damp groceries and inchy snails. The deep, earthy sharp-scented rain of childhood and a rose, crushed now from above and shedding its petals in a woody suburban place.

And maybe you look out on the glistening copse running down outside your window at 1am, sandy-eyed and only abstractly troubled by a retreating dream, with the cold feeling only longing brings, and brings to a point where it almost spills over the edge, the same edge between which your gaze is fixed and your body immobile dispite such inertia.

As if the soaking leaves and branches, trunks stained partly up and down from the heavy earth, a road slicked for pushchairs and those who glow outwards from that damp, hot heat on the inside when the air is humid..

As if that weren't enough, there's the light of a streetlamp. And it frames your view, defines your position in an orange haze that hangs, languishing and heavy in the air, coating surrounding leaves water-plated white, a quiet confidence to draw you in.

Rushing.

Rushing.

Dripping
little
showers.

Filling
catching
binding
sucking
taking
taking
taking.


And you have to draw away, because the streetlamp longing's hanging hazy in your body

too.