Copper Vespers

At a certain hour the light stops holding things together, and one by one they begin to come apart.

It is that hour here. A line divides the failing sky from the dark already risen beneath it. Along it, a stand of trees is dissolving, its forms loosening to scattered specks, more shadow now than substance. The day is nearly spent, and its last light falls in fine measured threads through the gathering dark, where a single copper moon, low over the ground, holds its warmth against all that cools around it.

This is the tenderness we keep for what is leaving: we watch it more closely, not less, the nearer it comes to gone.

Something of that warmth carries into the air around it, keeping the day's last light suspended, unhurried, never quite gone.