‘The Prisoners of Night’

The Prisoners of Night: 

 
The moon glittering;
Threading silver and gold
Through the still sheet of flowing navy
Rocking gently against its prison-like walls
Blue hands cling onto the ground
Inching with each grab closer to the rattling trees
Which chatter as the soft wind blows
through its dyeing growth.
The next day the hands become weak,
Give up
and stop reaching,
Instead retreating
back into the dark depths
in which the dirt-walls keep hostage.

They dig sometimes.
Moving.
Eroding.
Extending
their prison and sometimes,
with the clouds-
pitter, patter,
splish, splash –
they overflow,
breaching the high walls
and some of the lucky ones spill out
peering over the barricade.
Gazing up to see gold rising in the horizon and
Streaks of pink and orange dancing
In the ashen blue
Now they can cope
For the sky brings with it a little hope.