What Can I Write About the Night

What can I write about the night that has not been written a million times? Its velvety blackness, the winking stars and planets, the moon in its phases, and the faint glow of kitchen lights at my back can all be taken for granted.

I stand at the pasture gate, leaning on it a little, glad to hear the owls. I thought they had gone away when our neighbor to the north razed all the trees on his property.

The wind is blowing in from the south carrying on its back the heavy-voiced highway at its loudest and the freight train rumbling along the river a mile away, its strident warning sounding at the crossings.

Our animals are put to bed, safe from night predators. A short scuffle rustles faintly from the barn as they find their places in the stalls.

A silvery gleam comes from the other, ruined barn just beyond the boundaries of our land. I think idly about the impossibility of acquisition. A lottery dream.

Our next-door neighbor, his two acres, has lights strung along the rock wall at the back of his property all year. Afraid of the dark, I imagine. They aren’t country people.

A red winking light appears above in the starfield and, after a few seconds of delay, the sound of thrusting engines follows it, propelling a plane to some distant destination.

Towards dawn, the coyotes may howl on their quarterly hunting circuit, and resident foxes make their night cry, but this is a cold month, songbirds, frogs, and insects move silently or sleep.

Bare tree branches clack and jockey for position in the darkened breeze, obscuring the sound of traffic for precious seconds.

A twenty-first-century night is rarely silent and seldom dark enough for fear. Tonight I hear the yearning trees, voices pitched low under the confusion of sound and light, begging for quiet and the peaceful dreams of natural darkness.

There, I have given you five minutes of a night and the thoughts that came with it. There will never be another five minutes like it.