Where the Night Water Runs

Once I chased a dream, a bird song, a peacock feather, through midnight down to the lapping water silver crickets like ear-stars singing all along the fields where fieldmice hide. There is no place to go but down to where the night water runs, and runs black and slow, slow like feet running in a dream. Kind water, sweet and black whispering, "I take nothing back. I only go on." The dream was really a beast covered by night; I did not know, and I followed the rank smell far, too far away, to find it, large and turning, white clawed and snorting too awful for fear, too awful for running, the song of my living too awful for fear - and now to go on, walking; dawn is near.

Stephanie McLintock