A Midnight Conversation

Gavin Bradley

Pink moon chattering brightly 
draws me out of hiding, 
using the same gentle trick she pulls on the tides. 

I am no ocean 
and emerge with my wet, hare-nose wrinkling;
cautious of the night air, and the picotee blue sadness
it sometimes carries. 

She smiles; a gracious host to a timid houseguest. 
What else for it, then, but to pull up a pew? 

And how’s yourself? she asks, in silver-throated charity.
Not so good, actually—I begin, but of course,
she is an egotist 
and only wants to speak 
of the stars counted tonight.

---

Gavin Bradley is an Irish writer from Belfast, currently living in Edmonton, on Treaty 6 territory. Some of his work can be found in The Irish Times, The North, Best New British and Irish Poets, and Glass Buffalo. In 2020 he won the inaugural Edmonton Poetry Festival Prize for Poetry and his first collection of poetry is upcoming in 2022 from University of Alberta Press.

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