A Sleepy Revelation

The midnight hour had long since passed,
a hazy moon peeping from behind a grey curtain.
I walked carefully,
across a vast but fragile carpet of snow.

As I left the dim yellow light of the town centre,
where stragglers dodged the falling flakes,
my boots crunched shapes in the ground,
the only disturbance for quarter of a mile around.

My hair sprinkled with snowflakes.
My collar becoming damp.
In awe of a private showing,
of the Winter's opening night.

Just when I felt I was alone,
in this silent world of white,
in a quiet back street
I was confronted by a distant face.

Not the face of a man, woman or child,
Nor a face I knew.
A face of wild eyes and instinct.

It did not frighten but forced my feet to halt,
to observe the noble creature
disappear behind a black vale of darkness.

The creature belonged to a secret world,
living alongside my own,
yet one I knew little about.
A world with much to fear from mine.

Nevertheless, I was overcome with a sense,
that the creature knew more of my own world than I myself.
That somehow it possessed an overpowering wisdom,
a quiet understanding far beyond my own.

Now conscious of being the outsider,
the ignorant and the blind.
I clutched my coat and headed home,
a warm bed to find.

When morning came,
and a golden sunlight spilled
onto the wall above my bed.
I sat quietly and listened.

I was struck with a realisation,
that the chorus outside was not singing for me.
The notes not composed for my pleasure,
but sung in a language foreign to my own.

The earth did not belong to the human race,
but rather the human race was stranded on the earth.
Outcast from the rest of nature,
for its unwillingness to follow the rules.