There is magic in the summer twilight. The heat of the day begins to dissipate. The light, refracted, takes on an ethereal quality. The birds quiet their evening melodies, and all is still.

I try to be outside at this time of the evening, when the sun has just disappeared, but its memory has not yet faded from the sky. I’m quick to finish the kitchen chores, heat myself a cup of tea, and then take a seat on my front porch step. Upstairs, Cedric is putting Lou to bed. Outside, I savor the solitude, the silence, the atmosphere of meditation. It is lovely to be alone.

The twilight gives me that feeling of being so small, that realization that the forces of nature are so very large and grand. It is at once mortality and immortality. Once, I stood in the dusk, looking over a cliff that overhangs the sea, down into the swirling, violent waters and up into the purple sky. I felt the larger, palpating life in that moment. It was a powerful and beautiful feeling. I recapture some of that, here in the late evening, sitting on the porch with my cup of tea.