THE NIGHT WALKERS

 The Night Walkers

Once, I lived the nights

Where the moon paired with burning wood

To help an aging old man tell his tales

Of times when they were blazing like fire

And glowed like the moon.

Once, I lived the nights

Where my maesters shared stories

Of the night walkers

The terrors and bad omens they brought,

And the messages they left behind.

They said they came as men,

They said they came as women,

They came to leave omens,

They said they came as animals,

They said they came as the wind.

But I have lived the night

Where the night walkers were no destroyers.

They were drunk men staggering home,

Women; ancestors with calabashes in search of water.

Their messages were acts that screamed privacy.

The animals were flying owls,

Active crabs, busy by the wall, making new homes.

They were black male cats with glowing eyes,

Visiting their white partners with drowsy gazes, with meows that made their “catish” sultry.

The wind was the sea breeze,

Running free, sweeping through the surface.

Oh, perhaps I was a child,

Blinded by innocence and unable to see evil.

But now, the night has left its mark

Where barking dogs reopen my wounds,

And the wind steals away my sleep.

Now, I live the night,

Looking for shadows in the dark,

Pressing my ear to the wall/ground to hear the sound of a crawling man.

I lay in ambush like a hunter on a night’s hunt,

Waiting for the nocturnal beings.

For the night walkers are no drunken men

They are robbers who reap what they did not sow.

I have been robbed…

By a night walker

Of the peace and innocence the night once brought.

Alas, I live the night, looking for shadows in the dark.