When the evening comes

There’s a wedding going off over the valley - the lights on extreme right - and next to them a farmer out late cutting the heavy hay crop before the dew falls. His (?!) tractor’s flashing top light seems to keep time with the wedding band (whatever they play.).

Meanwhile our birds familiar are unphased and play out the day with their trills and pirouquets.
The fireflies will be out soon (although you could die waiting) and a chill air rolls down from our very own Monte Lupino.

The band has fallen silent. The tractor man is still cutting. A few cars pounding up the pass. Dogs softly barking. A moth crashing into my hair.

You could die waiting and you’ll never catch them on your phone. But they’ll come all the same. Whether I’m here or not. Like the lotus blossoming, unheralded, in the forest pond..

Later the band strikes up again, some kind of, as Mick Jagger might have put it, doomy ballad being imposed on the crowd. And the tractorman heading down the road to Strada. Even he had had enough by then.

The other night, a brief interregnum in the eternal gloom of this most strange of early summers, the sky cleared and in the crystal clear post rain air the stars were brilliant, manifest and manifold.

And the fireflies put on their magic, drawing down those so distant constellations to the earth, to our garden, to flash and compose themselves amongst shrub and wild rain-sodden/provoked growth. Giant skies sketched out and held by our ancient terrace walls.

The first fireflies have come now , tangentially,
braving the breeze. So husht now.

Even though the arsing band bangs on over the valley. Call and response time.

But we’ll not let them destroy the magic, eh?

Much to my surprise you can see them in this extra photo. Good old Monte Lupino.