Loss of Day

I'm not sure if I like this time of day or not - dusk, when God used to walk with man and woman.

It all depends does it not, if you felt you'd laboured sufficiently in the blistering heat, to merit respite in the cool of the day? For one who relishes the scorch of the sun, to suddenly lose its torrid embrace and be plunged into lengthening shadows and a sharp drop of ambient temperature,  I find this hour brings an undeniable sense of regret.

Everything about me too, registers loss.  The mountain ranges in the distance, that only hours ago were glowering majestically, proud peaks disdaining all that languished below  - now casting only a far diminished grandeur as ridges and gullies are relegated to deep shades of bruised purple.  Like a defeated boxer retreating sluggishly into its corner to sulk in the gloaming. The sharp, diamond-hard aquamarine of the mid-afternoon canopy above has likewise become lacklustred,  draining rapidly into a faded, jaded, gull's egg blue.

Soon that distant blob of encroaching night will stretch and growl towards me, like deadman's fingers reaching for resolution.  I am by now huddled in a corner of my terrace, with the last sliver of retreating sunlight relinquishing its hold on me as I cower and shiver, seeping warmth.  Any moment now, hitherto invisible clouds will make their bolshy presence known, entering a washed-up, unsuspecting sky in lumps and bumps like so many naughty sugar-plums, without a by-your-leave, and link pudgy arms until they completely take over space  in undecided hues of tangerine and ombre and slate and shell.

Then with a gulp, the sun will finally admit defeat and duck its tired head completely into the hungry belly of the horizon.  So evening falls, like a lead curtain, staking her claims for the remains of this day.  The air holds its breath: someone has warned the cicadas not to dare make a peep; but there's always one, isn't there?  From the west a whippet of a breeze steals in, slashing the atmosphere like the swish of a sharp sword.  A hapless shrill of swifts blasts across the twilight canvas, chased by the last of summer's thermals back into their autumnal nests.

I look up, searching deep into the now colourless expanse above.  To my relief, a lone star has emerged.  She winks a curtsy at me as I blink back, both of us resigned to the fact of black night's inevitable arrival to rule the roost. 

Giving up the light of day is always a hard thing to do.