CIVIL TWLIGHT

In the Burren,* not much is beautiful
save twilight. When the day is hot
grass burns yellow and stones swell.
Faces grow ruddy in July under a treeless
sky. Still, tents appear behind farms, filled
with those wanting to witness the unforgiving
Irish landscape swathed in shades of almond
and unreal lilac. Locals say there’s no real
twilight in the States, something about pollution.
Or maybe distance from the equator.
Tonight the sun sits six degrees below
the horizon—civil twilight. Technically, natural
illumination spills from the upper atmosphere,
but the Irish see it as a period of softening, at ten
or eleven p.m. Here a drip of condensation clings
to a pint on a picnic table. Cows chew thoughtfully
in a nearby field. No bugs flit around faces,
just the quiet air soaked with patient, between light.

* The Burren comes from the Irish word Boireann, meaning great rock, and describes a 300 square kilometer area of limestone in northwest County Clare.