All of it changes at evening

equal to the darkening,

     Linda Gregg, "Different Not Less"

This is the solitude, though at times there is

The loneliness too . . . how just before dusk

The late sky has lowered from its rain gray

Into a deep purple and here and there slants

Of yellow shearing off at the horizon; how slowly

All is deepening farther and nearer into black,

The ambient lights of town and the few stars

Flickering and going out, the night becoming

The space between the wick and the flame.

And how a mizzling mist begins settling first

On the far fields and then in the near pines,

And from his doorway all of where it was he

Had come to and might yet have gone is being

Lost again; how all his passages have come to

No more than this, the mist gathering into fog,

The fog gathering around him and he entering

Into it, as though there were nothing now

Between him and the earth, earth and the air.