Though the huntress, Night, can now no longer prowl, <br />Black as a nun, beneath her chilling, cold, cavernous cowl, <br />Like a pitch-dark panther padding, claws all sheathed, <br />Through our bright, unsleeping, lamp-lit city’s streets, <br />Out, far-out, in unremembered nooks, her rural haunts, <br />She still lurks hidden, waiting silent, poised to pounce. <br />Moonlight may mask awhile her terrors but, too soon, <br />She, like a scouting-party reconnoitring for the storm, <br />Creeps sinuously, extinguishing each faint, flickering star <br />Like candlelight snuffed out by blackout curtains of the war, <br />Casting her clouded cloak, fine filigree fingers of fleece <br />Wafted and woven into blinkering blankets by the breeze, <br />To capture fleeing constellations, for none escape her grasp. <br />Not even her mortal enemy, moonlight, can she let pass <br />As, unloosening laces clasping cloud’s cape to her neck, <br />She ensnares the moonbeams, stowing them in her sack. <br />Like a highwayman on horseback, hooded in disguise, <br />Steals his gold, she robs moon’s softer silver from before our eyes <br />And triumphs, like a tigress, as she wins her weakling prey <br />And, with her denizens of darkness, rules supreme in place of day.<br /><br />C Richard Miles<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/night-the-huntress/
