The city creeps towards midnight becoming 
a raw, unfettered place,
a dark and dangerous place.

My footsteps echo, hurried over
cobblestones — pounding to the rhythm
of my too-fast beating heart.

I watch for the shadows of strangers
in the dim, orangey glow
of flickering streetlamps and passing headlights.

The city at midnight slips sideways into strangeness,
becomes a place only half-way real,
becomes a place in which the 
mouldering and abandoned spaces—
now marked only for demolition—
resuscitate
under the moon's cold scrutiny.

In the city at midnight my footsteps
tap dance to the hum
of the ghost-fiddler's tempo floating
past my eardrums on a breeze
echoing from a dark and dusty window.

In the city at midnight I walk
alone.