Shouldn't…but Do

When the moon faces the sinking sun…

There is a whiff of autumn, no cicada’s.

Twilight winds nudge the leaves, the trees murmur as I walk the neighborhood.  I should have been somewhere else tonight, but duty called.  Duty talks louder than trees, but trees are more honest.

A sprinkler irrigates an immaculate lawn.  Its spray, back lit by the sun, reveals summer nights from a thousand years ago.  It is all there  – a father shooting hoops with his son, tended gardens of late summer, the rattle of a shaking spray paint can and the rev of a young man’s truck.  A peerless summer night, now and then.

That is the secret of twilight, and why I like it best – it is in between,  now and then, life and its reflection – when the moon faces the sun.