The dark came early

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." — John 1:5

It was dark at five-thirty yesterday.

I noticed because I was standing at the kitchen sink washing the supper dishes and I looked up and the window was black. Not twilight. Not the blue that comes before dark. Black. The window that in June showed me the garden and the fence and the pasture until nine o'clock showed me nothing at five-thirty, and I stood there with my hands in the water and looked at myself looking back at me, and I thought: November is here.

It is not November yet. It is October 28th and there are three days left, but the dark has arrived ahead of the month the way the dark always does — it does not wait for the calendar, it just comes, and the calendar catches up.

The clocks go back on Sunday. We gain an hour, which is what they say, and I have never understood the word gain when it is applied to an hour of morning light that costs you an hour of evening light. It is not a gain. It is a trade. And the trade means that by next Wednesday it will be dark at a quarter to five and I will be standing at this sink in the dark and the window will be a mirror every evening from now until March.

John says the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it, and I have loved that verse since I was a girl, and I love it most in October when the darkness is not a metaphor but a fact — five-thirty, black window, my own face looking back at me, and the light over the stove the only light in the room.

Lord, the dark came early. The light over the stove is on.