Midnight Musings

The power was out for stretches around. No lights. No sounds. Just darkness.

In the beginning…

There were fireflies rushing in and out of the shadows of the trees, undisturbed by the outage. I wondered if they rather liked it. If they felt boastful of their brightness on particular nights such as this when they didn’t need to compete with the brightness of men’s creations and could take up that whole night sky if the urge overtook them.

The stars in the sky, millions of times brighter, but millions of times further away, stooped to share equal majesty and the lightning bugs that I could have stretched my fingers out to touch looked like shooting stars swan diving into the forest. How funny that super novas and bugs looked the same from way down here.

The darkness was an ocean. Engulfing everything it touched. I stretched my arms out in front of me.

Nothing. They were swallowed whole into the midnight invisibleness.

Living in a world so bright and neon we often forget what total darkness really looks like. A darkness so complete that our eyes will never learn to adjust to.

The trees were giants. The light from the stars offered them no details, just shadows, and their size made them seem rather daunting. But their movements seemed so soft and graceful in the breeze that I decided they must be rather gentle giants.

Everything was so quiet except for the bullfrog which most definitely disillusioned the entire drama as he seemed to try and steal the show in a very off key and off putting manner.

Show off.

The lightning bugs were show offs too, for that matter, they just did it much more gracefully, so it seemed forgivable.

Beauty is always so forgivable.

I felt small under the constellations, and so big compared to the fireflies. Where did our size fall, really, on the grand scale of things? Compared to the white dwarf stars in our galaxy? Or compared to the atoms they had found they can now split in halves. My eyes fixed on the blackness in front of me I asked

“How big do you think we really are?”

Even though he was sitting next to me, it was too dark to even know if he were looking at me or at something light years away.

“Big enough.” He answered