Night falling

I love our home as the evening deepens and the darkness falls. The people retreat to their personal rooms – and all of us are quiet, so the house fills with silence. Not even beds creaking, because we sleep on the floor. Most of us don’t close the doors to our rooms (to let the cats come and go), so lamplight glows into the corridor. Some rooms have internal windows into the passageway, and Alice has made stained glass panels for two of them – so when the lamps are lit in the evening, they illuminate the coloured windows.

The passageways – both upstairs and down – are almost empty; no clutter, nothing left lying around, hardly any furnishings; a set of shelves by the door of one room upstairs, a bodhisattva, some coat pegs on the wall, some shelves for the telephone apparatus downstairs. Otherwise just spaciousness and peace.

Through uncluttered rooms, open doors, big windows, moonlight enters the silence. It feels like reverence.

Outside, as the wing of night folds down, dusk grows more shadowy. Flowers shining blue in the twilight gradually vanish into fragrant shapes. The night animals come for the food scraps we put down. The moon rises, the stars and planets shine clear. The day is done.