southern lights

I.

The night sky used to be brighter down here.  Far from the lights of New York or Boston or Washington, far away even from Atlanta or Miami, the bigness of the sky, the sharpness of its constellations, would surprise you when you walked along the wide, flat beach.  In New York City, there are no stars to be seen - and particularly not in Brooklyn, where the eye races always to the west, to see the brightly-lit work of man.  Heaven, such as it is, beckons horizontally, across the East River.

But down here, it was always different.  I remember walking home one night, age thirteen, when the island still was undeveloped.  There are few streetlights even now, and there were none at all on that road, no houses and no traffic.  The macadam beneath my feet melted into the jungle, a quivering, chirping, pitch-black jungle, full of things alive and watching me; and piercing through the black up above, also watching me, a thousand stars or more.  

II.

Yesterday, we flew over clouds that looked, disorientingly, like waves.  Despite the setting sun, the western sky beneath was low and flat, an angry black-blue.

Tonight, we went out walking in the after-dinner quiet.  The rain has left the resurrection fern springy and green, and above us the last remnants of yesterday's storm streaked to the north like something dragged.  All around the lagoons, yellow windows glowed, doubling themselves in the water below.  The sight of lit windows can comfort or alienate, in the sharp winter air (as tonight) and in tropical warmth; but the effect is most potent, obviously, when counterposed to darkness.

The designer Madison Cox has said that he doesn't really like night lighting in the garden.  In this, as in most questions of design, he's probably right; he's also, unfortunately, at odds with the current vogue for the promiscuous lighting of trees, shrubs, walkways, unremarkable walls, even driveways.  A glare which cancels out both the heavens and home: it seems like the worst of both worlds.

III.

What does the dog say? we asked my youngest nephew.

Barkbark! he cried.

What does the car say?

Vrooom, vrooom.

And what does the moon say?

Grrrrrrrrrr.