Weaving Tapestries, Painting Pictures, Dreaming Dreams

In the deep of the night as the world sleeps the dark blinds of the night are drawn slightly to let in a white light that separates the Earth from the sky, heralding the awakening of the Earth, which lazily sleeps on, even as the birdsongs welcome the new dawn from the bushes and trees. Reluctantly the Earth opens first one eye then the next, slowly as the dark blinds are further raised to reveal pinks and yellows. Sipping dew from pettaled cups and leafy saucers it stretches its arms, throwing off the bed clothes as the sun climbs out and spreads its light and as the sky lightens and changes drapes the darkness of the night does not leave but begins to withdraw and shrink, for the darkness belongs to the Earth and lingers around, gathering itself it creeps on the ground as shadows, crawling in layers under the Earth. Climbing up trees and clinging under leaves, moving to avoid the light of the sun, full of mischief jumping, giggling, staying just out of reach, it plays hide and seek all day. It lies on the ground, hides behind houses, under the trees, among the leaves, sometimes stretching, sometimes shrinking, it is never completely conquered by the sunshine and finally exhausted, the sun begins to slip westward to its rest and the night crawls out from under the ground, from the bushes and trees and from under the houses and bridges, barns and buildings, it stretches and grows and steals over mountains, hills and vales, over land and sea, fields and houses, it stretches and spreads even as the last light of the sun lingers in the sky, changing from yellow to amber, pink, orange, red, purple to a dark velvety blue and then gives up and is gone leaving behind the Earth to be cloaked in the blacks of night.
A cloak so dark that in the absence of the moon, in deserts and forests, on mountains, seas and oceans, in marshes and the open countryside, wherever on the land and seas, that man’s light does not reach in the night, the darkness is all consuming, all pervading, swallowing up every line and contour of all that lies, stands or moves, even though a billion stars shine in the sky above. The Earth reclaims its mantle of darkness and silence prevails, a silence in which one can hear the nocturnal music of the Earth, like the plaintive call of peewits, or the flapping of an owl’s wings, or the wind in the trees or the sounds of waves or flowing or falling water, for to nature the darkness brings tranquility and peace.