We got caught in a downpour when shopping in town so we popped into our favourite coffee shop, Home Ground, to shelter and have some excellent coffee. There were roses on the window ledge.

There are still flowers in our garden despite the wind and rain. I decided to bring some in to enjoy indoors.

I have shared Mary Oliver’s poems before and this seemed so apt for these nights that are drawing in earlier and earlier, not eight o’clock tonight but by seven o’clock it was properly dark.

Lamps – Mary Oliver

Eight o’clock, no later
You light the lamps,

 

The big one by the large window,
The small one on your desk.

 

They are not to see by—
It’s still twilight out over the sand,

 

The scrub oaks and cranberries.
Even the small birds have not settled

 

For sleep yet, out of the reach
Of prowling foxes. No,

 

You light the lamps because
You are alone in your small house

 

And the wicks sputtering gold
Are like two visitors with good stories

 

They will tell slowly, in soft voices,
While the air outside turns quietly

 

A grainy and luminous blue.
You wish it would never change—

 

But of course the darkness keeps
Its appointment. Each evening,

 

An inscrutable presence, it has the final word
Outside every door.