Late night walk

After midnight after a beautiful summer day. It's clear and calm, not a breath of wind, when Ty and I go for our final stroll, me keeping as usual to the tarmac path and street lights along the top of the Coombe while he explores the scents of the night. A new sound - pattercrackle, pattercrackle - not the stream, which is quiet after a few dry days, not the crickets, which are murmuring in the background, not the traffic, which is almost absent and very distant now. I stand still, listening, feeling for the sound. It's raining leaves. All around me leaves are falling, dropping straight down to the dry earth below, pattercrackle, pattercrackle. A fox barks from further down the Coombe, eliciting a frantic response from Widget the Lurcher at number 21. Ty, mercifully, is silent, and we walk home.