Outside

Late in the evening the world puts on a spectacle and I happen to be there to see it.  As the day darkens, the wind that has been howling all day dies down and three hawks circle in the updraft above the mountain ridge, calling to each other as the mynahs swoop towards their night roosts in the bamboo patch, coming in fast and low in squadrons so as to evade the hawks.  A bat flutters against the deepening blue: I haven’t seen a bat for years, and feel, like the Chinese, that it is a good omen.  Sunset tints the clouds orange-gold -  unfurled across the sky with the awful majesty of nebulae. One hawk sinks through the air, its wings flashing grey and white, and the mynahs go silent in the bamboo for a moment as beautiful menace passes over them. A single ice-blue star shimmers between the clouds and the dark ridge. The puppies play at my feet.  It is a gift to be in the presence of so many lives