Morning Walk

I step out of the back door into the garden, drawn outside by a luminescent moon. Ice-blue pin-pricks of light from distant stars illuminate an indigo sky. It seems ages since I star-gazed, lost in the immensity of the cosmos. After breakfast, I set off for a walk along the tow-path and into the city centre. The sky turns candy-floss pink then fades at the horizon into peach then yellow ochre. Vapours rise from the river like an ethereal presence. The air smells of damp, worn water over stone. A full moon spotlights my left hand side as I walk along the path. A flock of seagulls dart from the East, over the industrial drone of the treatment works at Knostrop. Bird song fills the air despite the distant echoes of jet engines overhead and factory turbines. A group of cormorants fly upstream their heavy bodies hung beneath elongated black wings. Crossing the footbridge to a new development of luxury apartments and houses I see the moon reflected in the water. Close to the Royal Armouries museum, a crow picks on shredded iceberg lettuce leaves and chilli sauce from a discarded take-away carton. Suddenly an intense blue flash crosses my field of vision, as a Kingfisher disappears passes by.