Bushy Park

Wurlitzer and carousel softened the night
while people shoaled on the milky ice-rink: 
a circling interweave of darting blades
whooping at muffled slips and spills.

We stayed beyond dusk into dark
to retrace our path into Bushy Park
where night seized us in icy talons,
an owlish moon blinked through drifting wisps.

And the baby cried in her pushchair
to see the Dog Star's frozen snarl
while Orion stabbed the savage air 
through a black blanket shrouding the car.

O we were glad to clunk shut its doors,
deny the fanged ice snapping at heels,  
cave-safe from sabre-toothed night
chilling the bone with ancestral darkness.

Glad to edge homewards through the trees
headlamping murk with full beams -
when the deer broke cover to bolt the road,
sprung from peripheral vision

into sudden illuminated impact,
muscling the night with jolting panic,
brown-fur rippling in full flight 
giving form to limitless black.

How we shuddered to a halt
snatching at something alive
at the edge of shadows half-caught -
a surge of sinew ripping the moonlight.