The Secret of Twilight.

I’ve been much given to wondering lately just what the secret of late spring and summer twilight is. Why does it suffuse the mind with a tantalizing hint of magic, especially out here in the emptier places where nature still holds some sway in a largely manufactured landscape?

I feel it when I hear the late songs of birds, and then watch them flying with haste and purpose across the garden on their way home to roost. And I feel it again when the silent bats and moths appear to feed through the growing darkness.

Maybe that gives the clue to the secret. Maybe it’s something to do with moving through an invisible interface between the noise and brightness of the daylight hours and the cool, nocturnal quietness. Maybe it’s all to do with cycles again, and nature’s simple imperatives, and the need to understand – and it’s something I sometimes find difficult – that life is worth living just for the sake of living it.

So maybe it isn’t magic at all. Maybe it only feels like magic because it offers a tantalizing glimpse of what life is about. And anything that’s tantalizing inevitably leaves a residue of mystery hanging in the subtle fabric of the twilight air.