Equinox

After a long wet summer, a perfect autumn night.

Cloudless, starlit. Only a breath moves the candleflame.

Moths are stirring, and mosquitoes. There’s the drone

of a distant plane. A child is laughing in the house next door.

Out here, on the verandah with flame-fraught moths

& the occasional fruit bat flapping for company,

the earth, it seems, has reached a moment of peace,

a moment of balance. Stillness falls like a blessing

that not even the traffic on the road outside can disturb

There’s nowhere else that he would want to be

this warm evening, eucalyptus stamens as drifting down

and fruit bats circling overhead, or hanging as black

umbrellas in the trees this night without a hint of rain

& nothing yet to tip the balance into coming winter.