dark waters of the night

I was down at Port Glasgow last night in order to drive my parents to the airport early this morning. 4 am early. It was the most curious thing.

There was birdsong in the pitch black for a start. After some minutes, from a few houses down, a party emptied onto the street. I could hear them before I saw them. Slurred shouty voices proclaimed the end of the celebrations. Two people were walking up the middle of the road laughing and giving it big arms as if it was a catwalk. Between shouts the birdsong was still there, being answered from the trees a little deeper across the road.
With the car packed and ready to go the revellers had passed us and were now a bit more subdued and on the pavement opposite. Beyond them was the dark of the night passing, the dark of the water in the river below. Out there the bouys flashed red and green marking the channel of deep water. The couple walked shoutless now. Birdsong reasserted itself. A call, a response. A red flash, a green from the channel in the river.

We drove to the airport. The road reflected back the car's lights in straight lines of white and red and yellow. We passed under a bridge and on we went.
At the next bridge, standing straight with his back to our approach and his arms by his side looking directly ahead at the road, was someone that I thought must be some kind of Anthony Gormley installation (see extras). It was very unworldly approaching the bridge in the dark at 4.15 am with this sentinel figure stock still overhead.
We passed and I tried to see in the rear view mirror. He was there. He was erect and motionless. There but not there somehow. We all expected a jump.
We soon got to the airport and I dropped off my parents and headed back, keen to be at the bridge again. Would he be there? Will something awful have happened? Would it indeed be revealed as some art installation recently erected? 
The bridge was empty when I passed it. It was someone, then. They had gone on their way hopefully to safety.
I arrived at the house and the birds had stopped singing. The river was still out there though, for the lights were still flashing a warning for those that would navigate the night in dark waters.
I let myself in and went back to bed beside my sleeping son. That person on the bridge, that dark morning sentinel, watching yet unseeing, on my mind as sleep took me.

We woke, had breakfast and went down to the river's shoreline in the grey light to freshen up and throw off the night. The tide was low, revealing the muddy spikes of the timber ponds. Curlews and redshanks and oystercatchers and lapwings poked about for food.
After about an hour we headed back up home to Glasgow, passing under the bridge again where the man wasn't there. He was though, I have this feeling that he is always going to be there every time I pass under it. Looking: not looking.