As Darkness Falls

I was outside the other evening.

It had been a beautiful afternoon. Chris and Makayla and I had taken a long walk to enjoy the afternoon and the clear blue skies as well as the touch of autumn which is beginning to adorn the trees in the neighborhood.

I decided to walk the yards--something that I all too infrequently do just to see how things are doing. I often do small tasks like removing fallen branches and I also determine whether it is time to mow again--which it is by the way.

As I was completing my tour of the yards, I noticed the setting sun was delineating a clear line of light and dark on the trees in the back yard.

It was eerie.

There is was--the dividiing line between day and night, it seemed, clearly drawn on the trees behind my house.

Now I know this was not the famous terminator line. But I could imagine it was, for a minute. The difference between the light and dark was very stark.

Above, in the tree tops it was bright as day and cheerful. Below, it was night. Hard to see and full of unseen unknowns.

The trees are mostly green but the colors of the autumn are creeping into their canopies.

Soon, after the leaves are fallen, the trees will cast ghostly shadows on the lawn instead of providing their ubiquitous shade.

But that is still to come as the seasons continue their inevitable cycling which spawns new life and sees it through to maturity and then starts over again.

For now though--I glimpsed, or I could imagine I glimpsed, the line separating light and darkness as it crept across my lawn and night fell.