The Night

I love the night, I always did. I never was afraid of the dark, not even as a small child: on the contrary I relished in its mystery. As the night falls, the frontier between imagination and reality becomes blurred: familiar surroundings become distorted by the play of shadows, by the touch of milky moonlight, by our own, altered perception. By our fears, by our dreams. Distances, proportions waver and change: gone are the rules and the logic of daylight. 

 

 

Warm summer nights, gazing at the stars. Seeking in their midst worlds beyond our imagining. A shooting star, a fleeting wish. The song of crickets in the background. Hushed stillness as the heat of the day lingers on. Bats swooping up and down, chasing moths. Above the dense foliage of trees, the Milky Way.

Autumn nights, smelling of fallen leaves and frost to come. Of woodsmoke, of roasted chestnuts. Shorter days, colder dusks. Glorious sunsets, dipped in golden light. Lengthening shadows, creeping over the land. A pale crescent, looming over the horizon, greets winter with a smile.

Winter nights, looking at the darkness outside from a brightly lit room. Hoping for magic, hoping for snow. Opening the window to breath in the cutting cold, to watch the lights of villages afar, to get a glimpse of what the stars reveal. Remaining by the hearth as the ambers slowly glow and die and let the darkness creep in and the night take over the house.

Spring nights throbbing with renewed life. Hundreds of frogs croak their song of seduction and love. An owl shrieks as it leaves its nest, and the brood within, for a solitary hunt. The first stars appear in a cobalt sky, pale and hesitant, glimmering shyly. A blackbird sings the day away.  

 

 

To be alone, awake, at night, is to be, for a moment, the only human in the world. In a world of secrets, where we do not quite belong. In a world when time itself, slows down, quickens, stands still, stops, mocking the regular ticking and the timid chime of the old grandfather clock in the corridor. 

When comes dawn, pale and grey, the night retreats, reluctantly, loath to relinquish its hold on the world it made its own. Chased by a chirping bird. Leaving as a parting gift spattered pearls of dew tangled in a cobweb.