The Sweet Scent of Night
By John Herlihy

There is comfort in darkness,
It makes very little demands.
Some feel unease in darkness,
But it makes no reprimands.
Darkness harbors no protection,
Deep sleep is its only real escape.
In the ether, something roams;
It is called the sweet scent of night.
It arrives unannounced with rain.
The silence of the night is broken,
By the lion’s voice of rain’s roar.
Muddy puddles quickly accumulate,
Later to reflect moonlight and stars.
When the rain stops, silence returns,
To allow peaceful darkness to appear,
Drawn from the thickness of the night.
Shortly after the meridian of midnight,
The moon lulls the world into dreams.
The night stretches out like a lazy cat,
Swallowing everyone in its deep maw.
The curtain is lifted as darkness glows,
Where night's thief goes, nobody knows.