Hot Day, Cool Evening

A dozen roses have bloomed in the back yard and most of them face a bit west of south, toward the spot where the sun hides each afternoon behind the roof of the house. The roses seem uninterested in the dawn, filtered as it is by the flourishing leaves of the oak and walnut trees. They like that patch of sky from which imperturbable brightness pours a few hours each day. They want the very last bit of it, to keep them though the sunless hours. That's the time of day I seek shade, if I go outside at all.

For me the dappled morning where night's coolness lingers a while is the best of the day, until that dimming hour of dusk when the blaze has gone down and the first faint stars appear. But that isn't day at all. It is night beginning to devour the roses and the world's other details, leaving intact only dark forms that loom in silence. The winding down has a serenity day cannot equal, but by night I always remember the roses, lost in the darkness, the essence of melancholy.


( Sunday Verse )