How still is the world at night #Poetry

How still is the world at night
after most have fallen asleep

I sit here with a book in hand and write
while you sleep in the next room 
unaware of the moonlight on your lips

the silence is not silence

no, not tonight
perhaps it never is

out of the night I hear the sound 
of an opossum digging
below the window in the sideyard
in darkness he sniffs out a black beetle

the owl too finds his evening meal
and the coon scratches at a tin lid
hoping always that someone was careless

an old toad hops over the still warm pavement 
croaks, waiting for a lover
but she does not answer – a Junebug has ceased flight

but here in the softlight there is a calm
the day had been a slow one
and now it has closed 
indeed the crickets have laid aside their song
and the opossum has wandered home

how elegant is the blue quiet

© VishalDutia