The Day Is Done.

I watch as the sun melts softly into Seefin mountain.

As it fades away, my eyes drift back over Dunmanus Bay where the horizon is now topped by a frayed band of powder blue cloud below a shell pink sky.

I breathe in deeply, feeling deliciously sleepy, as the day draws to a close.

My mind is as still as the air in the garden.

A soft breeze ripples across the grass, nudging the branches of the trees that shelter the lawn.

A bat takes flight, cutting the stillness with his crazy zig zag haste through the dusk.

He reminds me that it is only here that I can stare at the sea or the sky or the mountains for long periods, drinking in all the beauty without any thoughts whirring the machinery of my brain.

It is only when I am here that I don’t rate my day by what I have achieved.

It is only here that I can simply and deliciously just be.

My eyes drift over the garden again. I can still make out Kitchen Cove straight ahead and the clear outline of Seefin standing majestically to the west.

The earth seems to exhale gently, relieved that the heat of the day has subsided.

In the far distance, beyond the cove, Mizen slowly melts into nothing as the darkness deepens.

The soft glow in the western sky fades away.

And I feel my mind whirring slowly into action, as it processes a thought. The words of one of my favourite poems begin to tumble into my consciousness.

“The day is done and the darkness

Falls from the wings of night,

As a feather is wafted downward

From an eagle in its flight.”

These words are from The Day is Done by Henry Longfellow.

I get up in slow motion, I close the patio door and lower the blind. My world contracts again.

I head to bed, wrapped in the warm glow of my sunkissed skin.

As I climb the stairs, relishing the prospect of deep sleep, Mr Longfellow’s last verse bobs to the surface.

“And the night will be filled with music,

And the cares that infest the day,

Shall fold their tents like the Arabs

And as silently steal away.”