Moths and Ghosts

Ghosts wash into my dreams here, seems only natural.

Last night my brother, John, looking younger, sitting beside the storage heater with no shirt on, waiting happily for someone to dress him, big daft lad. Had we not walked around Newcastle all afternoon seeing his name on plaques - John Dobsons everywhere. Then another, waking me to remind me of the first, slipping away behind it.

Near 6 I gave up on lying in the dark and went into the garden. Light breaking over the mouth of the river ('moth' according to the est. agents' ad) in shell pink streaks, unknown birds calling, beautiful and strange. And a dragging, shuffling sound I thought was from the path that runs alongside the garden but did not pass by as expected (I wasn't afraid of it but preparing a shy and stealthy peek when it should pass me). Someone in the market garden across the way working early, perhaps, in the dark, though it sounded like something huge hauling itself from the sea - the Moth of the Tyne itself, maybe.

But moths and ghosts are forgotten as fast as nights end here, before it occurred to me to fetch a torch I realised I could already see the remains of rain water on the table top in front of me, no sign of anything or anyone it might have been, and daytime things to be done.