My world is moonless, black and cool. Backyard empty of its flying colors, sounds not happy chirps and tweets but rustling, walking, stalking that I cannot see at night; ominous, unfriendly sounds.
The black and yellow flutterby sipping nectar from the white lilac canopy where the lady hummingbird had dined all day, gone. Or are they? I wouldn’t know it. Coyotes, or rightly, coydogs, I’ve met out here in darkness a couple times. One so close he glared at me, eyes shining in the catch of kitchen window light; I shouldn’t be here. It’s not my place at night, he says, it’s for him and other creatures. I have the day; that’s where one like me belongs. Leave the night alone.
Same step, same doorway, same trees and rolling lawn, but different at a different time of day. Different as day and night, they say, and this is why. It’s not just what we see or don’t, it is the feeling and the sense of space dependent on the time. And memory of what it is is all we can depend on, until the morning sun confirms what we believe should be.
Truth is only true in light of day.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology