late dawns / early sunsets

It happens surprisingly fast, the way your shadow leaves you. All day you’ve been linked by the light, but now that darkness gathers the world in a great black tide, your shadow leaves you to join the sea of all other shadows. If you stand here long enough, you, too, will forget your lines and merge with the tall grass and old trees, with the crows and the flooding river—all these pieces of the world that daylight has broken into objects of singular loneliness. It happens surprisingly fast, the loss of your shadow, and standing in the field, you become the field, and standing in the night, you are gathered by night. Invisible birds sing to the memory of light but then even those separate songs fade into the one big silence that always seems to be waiting.