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Dusky light thickens
A frame for constellations
Circling the North Star

Pink clouds turn to gray
Daylight welcomes darkest night
Bat wings in the air

I stumbled upon the source of cold
quite by accident this summer
passing an almond orchard near my home.
Late in the afternoon on a hot summer day
I was biking a rural road
past the neat matrix of trees
arranged like atoms in a crystal.
Is there magic in geometry
that can cool the air?
Is it something about almonds?
Would olives or oranges do as well?

I remember walking in orange groves
in my youth and far away,
dark sturdy leaves masking globes like suns
stars clustered in dense green gas.
Theirs was a different magic,
spawning spiders at dusk;
thousands of orb-weavers
casting nets between every pair of trees.
Were they trying to catch us?
We made our escape in gathering twilight,
wrapping ourselves in panic fine as silk as we ran.

Waning pulse of days
daylight’s heartbeat slackening
year’s death at solstice

Watching the day pass
Sunlight ends in a window
Whispers toward the night