Outrunning sunset

The sun sets suddenly here. It slips behind a mountain ridge long before it sinks below the true horizon with a watercolor parade of dissolution. If a lone jogger on the old railroad line, squinting westward in the late afternoon, turns back at this moment, she will see the sunlit eastern hills before her, and a line of shadow racing toward them. In the act of turning she'll have missed the shadow passing over her head. And should she try to chase it, propel herself back into day, she'll find it’s not possible. As she sprints, lungs full of the air of gladly dying leaves, the shadow races up the hills like a kite catching wind. By the time she's given up, catching only her breath, colors speak only gray and she needs electricity to find the way in. Nightfall here is not the slow darkening of tea into hot water; it’s instant coffee. There is no outrunning sunset, only a furious sprint into dark.

Burn on

A walk-taker in a woolen Scottish cap greets me not with a chin tilt and a blink, but with a full-armed wave and a noisy hello. An old lady appreciates the mid-afternoon sunset and flecks of gold and flamingo pink dance in her eyes. People buy wasabi, cayenne, and fractals of ginger; they sweat at their kitchen tables. Dogs, predictably, leap at the abundance of dead things to smell and dig. Artists putter in their garages at night, warmed by concentration. So we know that the advancing winter doesn't shadow northern spirits-- no, we take it as a dare to burn on. And in the small window of a house that the south-clinging sun barely touches, a net of Christmas lights glows, all hours, despite rising electricity bills: a galaxy more luminous with each darkening hour.