Tonight, 9:00 PM. I walk outside, into the summer cool of the air, smelling the dryness of the fields and the dampness of the grass. I patter down the steps leading from the back deck down to the yard, relishing the feel of the bottoms of my feet against the rough steps, and then the bricks of the pathway, and then the sharp bark. Only a little bit of light remains: it dusts the horizon to my left gold and pink, only an afterthought of the bright afternoon retiring to the west. Sole occidente. A heavy, zoom-lensed camera swings against my chest as I tiptoe, because I find stark depth-of-field soul-satisfying. I spot the bush of blush-pink peonies growing on the stone wall in front of me. I lift, put the view-finder to my right eye, rotate my fingers on the cylinder of the manual focus. Squint. Balance the weight of the camera against my arm, shooting into the disappearing sun, lens yearning for the last drops of light. Blur is the deadliest casualty of shooting without flash at night, but I'll take what I can get. The dusk is gracious, giving its last bits of gold to me, in my white pajamas, standing in the grass, smelling the peonies, smelling of them. The light fades as it always does, in an instant, the blush-pink of the flowers enveloped into the summer night.
thanks be to God for the simplicity of dusk, the peaceful ending of the day that reminds us that darkness fades in and out; that because Christ conquered death and made it His, it does not last, and it is always tempered with a beauty all its own.
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