Nocturnal – Tom Branfoot

Leave your threshold to look
out over night-dark fields,
a sea of empty space.
Te distant mansion
glistering, all animals burrowed,
even the wood mouse we used to tend
has snook into the depths.
You fancy yourself a conjurer —
the blueing air, windborne feathers,
nightly fireworks pealing.
At dark, you search for something more.

Tom Branfoot is a poet from West Yorkshire, studying English and American Literature at Manchester Metropolitan University. His poems have been published in Murmur, Penny Thoughts, and Pink Trolley. His debut pamphlet will be published by Pariah Press.

‘Nocturnal’ portrays an autumnal scene reduced to darkness. It represents the liminal space in the night between possibility and emptiness. It describes the blackness outside contrasting with interior lighting,  creating ghosts and figures beyond the thin safety shield of window glass into the outside. ‘Nocturnal’ is about when tenderness vanishes with age, and people begin to grasp on anything they can.