an evening, with goats

The light softens as the sun drops behind the hills and the heat of the day begins to relent, pushed back by shadows, and mauves and purples creep up the hillside and animals who had hidden in cool places come out to graze and colors bleached out in the beating sun take on a gauzy imprecision, as if oils were giving way to gray-washed watercolor and it seems that if this is not how it will be when evening comes to paradise, that for the moment it is close enough for me.


Why describe something like that?  It doesn't mean anything.  The sun's going down in the evening is even less remarkable than its rising in the morning.  And it was not beheld from a craggy promontory, a god taking his exit wrapped in his robes of celestial state.  I was looking at an ordinary pasture with ordinary goats.  The field was not Elysian nor were the goats gold-plated.  There was nothing to amaze, save that something so ordinary should be so beautiful.