Evening. These vague moments now are all but hushed, the few sounds standing out, emphasizing their quiet background the way the dark shapes of silhouetted trees emphasize the deep cerulean sky's declining light. Each frog croak is like a clock's tick, or like punctuation to last words scribbled in haste as dark falls.
Later the moonrise (now lagging more than two hours behind sunset, spring's first full moon having already gone) will bring back some of what is lost, animating the landscape's spectre, perhaps finding the subtle shapes of clouds made of vapors too monotonous to have been revealed by the sun. Until the moon coaxes the world back to life, though, the darkness will make a mystery of the woods, and the fields will be lit by only what faint starlight the clouds permit to pass and what earthly light the clouds reflect.
Here by my house, though, lit rooms will make my drawn window shades glow, and maybe puzzle passing moths whose beating wings, though causing the air to quiver, will be inaudible to my ears. Unlike the day, which can flatter my mind into thinking my eye's perceptions are reality, the dark hours remind me that they're full of things I don't know. Full night can thus arouse an impatience for the moonrise, that it might cast distracting veils by which to restore some small measure of day's solidity, assuaging the unease.
Wait! I'm quite sure I just didn't hear a moth fluttering outside my window!
