Night walking when the night is mine
When the night is kind
Always in the back of my mind
Some tiny part of me knows
The night could slip away from me
But not this night
This night is not Flipside

This night is honeysuckle on
the warm breeze
The air cool
But thick
Like drinking flower scented tea
The remnants of spring blossoms
Still ghosting the air
It’s their fruits now that I drink in

Far way a shuffling figure kicks a rock in the night
They don’t see me
Or if they do they pay me no heed
They aren’t a monster from the flipside
I have no need to be afraid on this night

No shops are open
The river calls to me
The highway a beacon of terror
a ribbon of fearful lights
painful, screaming
Howling
Flesh tearing monsters roaming it

But the rivers sings
Heavy and thick
Pouring molasses down its banks
Hemmed in here
I know that

This is not a good place to be
The river is more likely to be flipside
But it’s beauty, day or night pulls my feet
The scent of ripening cherries fills my nose
Along with hawthorns, apples slowly filling out their small forms
Dill brushes my leg and crushes along with a
cacophony of lavender and oregano beside my front gate
Where tumbling lemon and cinnamon thyme and rosemary too
Chime in with just a hint of something that has a hint of
Cinnamon and chocolate in one of the herbs

After the hot day, their essential oils are full to bursting
I pinch of a few leave and let the scents linger between my fingers
I had forgotten I planted pineapple and chocolate oregano… divine!

Down the crooked sidewalk I go
Enjoying that there is no need to not rush
After all, why hurry when the bloodsuckers
Have gone to bed and the heat of the sun has finally
Waned leaving a perfect summer night?

Only just over a block away, I burst on the river far too soon!
Even this time of night, perhaps it’s the moonlight,
I can make out the shapes of some geese and ducks
Catching late night fish
Enjoying the date and the cool evening as much as I

It’s almost silent except for the sounds of the occasional big truck
rumbling up the highway behind me
Close to the river, the light pollution starts to give way
I can see the dim outlines of stars
I know now as I know any time I get too far away from
The hurley burley,
That I am not meant to live in the city
Or even a small town
I’m meant for the wilds
I didn’t domesticate well.
Even though I put on a good show of the trappings of urban life
A country girl belongs with the trees
With the stars and the animals, in the wild and tame

Here, there is no wild.
Not, real wild.
The grass is neatly cut
The trees shepherded to their required spaces
The grass is weed free and kept cut short
But never by cows, sheep, goats or horses!
Not even a duck or a chicken is allowed in these sacred
Human park spaces

A man with a lawn mower, a weedwhacker
With chemical deterants
Comes quietly to tuck away any thistle or nettle
That may upset another very different sort

I sigh. It’s hard here to even find a stray branch or stone.
The flowers are tucked under plastic and mulched
Theres never any weeds in these beds
They would never grow herbs or things with ‘upsetting’ smells
Only grasses and inoffensive bulbs poke their way through
Their allotted space in the mulch

It’s here that the flipside has it’s appeal
I close my eyes- but not too long
For fear I forget myself and let the flipside
C r e e p
and become real
Instead, I rest on a perfect bench
Until the streetlights start to flicker
And clouds of insects start to gather
The flipside is close
I must return home