Nightfall

 

All of us falling asleep as [nightfall] falls. Notice the light gone down over Mallacoota, the tent lights and whiskey laughs, and the others like us asleep. Outlines of trees now almost indiscernible from sky. Paddocks turning down the heat to off, beside back roads inland and down to the edges of farm houses. The Gippsland Lakes are losing their colour to the darkness, medium boats somewhere for some of us within to fall asleep. And dark is sweeping along the coast so quietly, the falling yellow now fallen blue-black as the ocean reminds us how sleep is one part of a two-part act only darkness can impart. Inverloch, typically, listens to the waves it hardly notices, so familiar is Inverloch with waves where beach grass holds out against sand collapse, coastline falling backwards and nightfall falling again, and us sleeping here and there already. Maybe some birds make sounds but most seem to choose quiet now the dark again provides security from intrusions. And here it comes, darkness falling across glistening Melbourne into the metropolis’s next night like the million others after and before anything called Melbourne, where the wind rests into a quiet kind of tree whisper, a tranquil rush between sides of residences. Bending branches of white and orange lights where roads take the easing traffic into tunnels and out, lead again towards moderately well-lit streets and gold-mosaic windows wherein soon enough all of us are falling asleep. White rectangles of computers glint softly within, or go black with screensaver, as rooms talk the talk before falling forwards into observable sleep patterns. Paling fences give up their cubist shifts of shade, forgotten like all the other extraneous cares that lengthen and shorten over a day. Meanwhile within the hour nightfall turns down the heat in the ranges where the beautiful animals drift into their nocturnal other selves, barely crushing a twig where they may go, or else falling asleep outside the attentions of predators or cameras. Out the back of Ballarat all of us are falling asleep, another day of crops or livestock, how the water levels are up or down, and what next with extreme weather events. Dogs open one eye to watch the human scenery, to fall asleep in relative comfort. Nightfall comes to Warrnambool and soon beyond, a solace to those worn down with work, a wake-up call for shift workers in hospitals. A torch helps those finding their way across an unknown destination, beams twitching across the trees, in the immediate darkness of the countryside. Notice the moon in one of its phases speechless and unassuming between where horizon must be and the start-ups of stars. Thereabouts, above rivers and old volcanoes, are the millions of other moons that go unseen without name, but bigger than the average river stone, asleep or awake.