Lately

After moonset, the bright stars grow brighter, and the lesser stars emerge to join them. The dimming softens the landscape, all the forest sinking into shadow, all the hard-edged, moonlit fragments of houses vanishing. Faint rustling sounds break the quiet as a dry leaf here or there is sent scuttling along the street by vague breezes. For the most part, that stillness prevails which day seldom provides, but is a gift of late nights, when all the town has settled, and before the earliest risers have stirred from sleep. They all have their blankets, and I have the spangled sky.

I hear the car pass along a nearby street. The sound fades, then returns, grows louder, and finally the headlights rake the corner house. Flung papers trigger motion sensing lights, and bits of the built street emerge as the dim stars lately did. The car passes up the block, then back down, leaving a partly illuminated world in its wake. After a moment, the lights go out, one by one, and the sound of the car diminishes once more, then is gone. Night is restored to me. But there, lying on driveways, unseen, I sense those newspapers, waiting to be picked up, waiting to reveal the world my small world inhabits. I leave my own copy lie there, and watch Orion lean toward the horizon as he races away from the approaching sun.

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Lately

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