Night Spell

I’ve been boat bound all day. Finally, after dinner I step onto the pontoon and head for the showers. It is quiet on the marina. The water dark and still, flatly calm. Sky and water merge in places, printing copies of each other in ink and light.

Cranes stand guard at the perimeter, their far gaze reaching out, laddering across the water. All day they, lift and sway. Now they just watch and wait, marking time until the morning and their call to arms.

Woodsmoke weaves its way into my nostrils. The tang of sharp water. The dwindling diminuendo of damp fireworks. Soot marks its presence, pulling me into the past down an echoing trail that soon fizzles out in an olfactory hubbub of incense and evening meals.

Light leaks, chinking from portholes, fanning through blinds, casting sparkler trails of spells against the darkness. The shift of logs in burners, a cast of runes carving the bounds of home and safe passage.

On the bank opposite my boat, my favourite tree is lit as if from within, a hazy cloud of red and green. Round the corner, the traffic lights blink, me too, me too, marking the stretches of the night in blinking fits and starts.

Down in the basin, held in the water, the night is tamed as the spell is cast.