Sunset On My Street

Inside the houses under the streetlight

the children, called in from play at twilight 

by careful mothers, have all been fed

and folded safely into their beds.

Now the mothers' and fathers' hands

are washing dishes, last of the demands

of the day, and then turning on the TV.

Outside, sky-watching, is only me ...

though perhaps old ghosts from down the hill,

ghosts of riverbank tribes, may still

wake on such nights of tempestuous sky

to gaze too as windblown clouds fly high –

inky and murky, and flushed aflame

in more shades of red than I can name,

and tawny and gold, and even some white 

behind the black trees, just ahead of night.

Day 10 of April Poetry Month at 'imaginary garden with real toads' is for Poem Sketching: using word lists as a preliminary sketch for a poem. We were given a choice of selecting from some given word lists, or choosing words for one of our own photos and then using a thesaurus to make them richer. I did both (but kept my own nouns un-enriched):

tribe riverbank ghosts names 

mother folds twilight hands

inky tempestuous tawny flushed 

trees clouds sky houses streetlight