Evenings

I can see the tops of almond trees tinged by a setting sun, a vast column of starlings overhead and hear their whirring wings as they head home to roost. Feel the settle of things, a slowing down of movement into a clumped quiet from where nervous eyes look out to see what menace wakes. Then the sad folding and the putting away leaving a hollow fear invades and fills, a descending sanction upon the tongue not to speak or to make a sound lest something will be seized and taken, becoming no more than a hole healed over to a bright render on the facade of another day.