Llythyr o’r nos : Letter from the night

Stephen Price

I’d tell you where I am if it mattered

I’m in an otherworld. A blanket of fallen snow nightly descending

The glow of a window here and there my only light

Engines are silenced. My screen fatigued eyes are soothed

Just the dark and me. And tylluan frech watching, hunting, from a distant post

We commune regularly, y nos a fi

I’m with her now. In silhouette

I have an app on my phone that will tell me the names of the stars

I tell myself I’ll check later

But my brain no longer works as it did. So I won’t

I admire them nonetheless

And dance, and sing, and speak out loud in Welsh and English

And walk a corridor to the past

Until a car passes by momentarily. All the modern things

My eyes adjust back to the real world, the forgotten world, the other world

I often wonder why it’s just me that gets it. That needs it

These starlit solo nocturne walks

‘Male privilege’ or ‘mad privilege’ perhaps. A shame we got to this

Dream me a dream that everyone could heed the owl’s call

And leave their phones behind

And look up at the stars again

And know them all by name