Have you ever walked the streets so late at night it’s early morning -- two, three a.m., four at the latest -- and listened to the sound the birds make sleeping in the trees?

They say the streets are quiet then.  That’s surely wrong in noisy cities; two’s when the bars close, some shops there never close at all, but even in the softer parts of town:

At two a.m., the buildings shuttered, all folk asleep who can be sleeping, I walk through the streets and listen to the sound of dreams that spill out of the houses -- they’re noisy at this hour (the dreams), and rowdy, like the radio turned up, up, up in the car that’s cruising -- not cruising at this hour, but will be later, when those dreams get out of bed and take the children off to school, the parents off to work, and later still, when they (the dreams) get out and rumble through the streets, not sure where else to go.

I stand by storm drains, listening also for the roaring of the water -- not after days of rain, but when the wind has been whistling and singing in the trees.  They roar then too, and gurgle, anticipating stormy nights. The sound is heard more through the feet than ears, coming up from underneath and through.

Sometimes the sound has nowhere else to go than up, up, up towards the stars and the moon, tilting, as it does, towards the horizon.