Midnight, and the sound of the sea.

Midnight...the sound of the sea, the sigh of the breeze.
Watching the dark distance, looking out across the shimmering skin of the ocean towards the edge of the world; no ships, no stars, just the moon behind the thin veil of clouds breathing silver down onto the vast, watery world.
Out there is the delphic night. Starless and bible black; no less than the slow black, sloe black, crow black of Dylan's dark universe.
He watched and waited. 

In the dark, when vision begins to fail, when all that was red and yellow and green and magenta darkens into an abyss of cold blue, other senses become more acute. Sound becomes your guide. He listened to the sound of the sea washing slowly back and forth across the sand, licking the immovable black rocks, as serene and regular as the sound of breathing, each wave advancing and retreating with a sigh, the ocean inhaling and exhaling as if sleeping in the crepuscular calm. He could smell and taste the salt of the ocean's breath, the tang of the savory air clean and sharp in his nose and on his tongue. The taste of her tears when she left...

Turning away from the starless sea far below the towering cliff, he peered into the stygian darkness, disorientated at first, he waited while his eyes struggled to find some detail or shape that his brain could recognise. Gradually he could make out the curving outlines of meadows rolling away in folds of shadows. The rhythm of the land is never smooth or regular, there are no sharp lines or angles, the geometry is not mathematical, nor precise. Sometimes flat, smooth farmland divided into a quilt of fields, some ploughed into furrows, some green and some fallow, resting for the next season. Sometimes shaped by the force of nature in eons past, endowing her with voluptuous curves, this sensual Mother Earth upon whose benevolent body we are suckled and nurtured, this Mother Earth to whom we are Oedipus and Elektra incarnate. Such are the stories we tell.

All the darkness could not hide the passing time; to the west was yesterday's light, to the east a new dawn moved tomorrow ever closer, time and death working hand-in-hand. Time and words, time and silence, time forever changing, time forever leaving only memories behind. The sound of the sea at midnight, the taste of the sea on his lips, the memory of her tears when she left. 

He walked back from the cliff edge towards the car, the breathing of the sea becoming fainter while the breeze from the land whispered louder in his ears. He could just make out the silhouette of the rough edges of distant hills dressed in pine trees that stood up along the ridges of the hills like the sharp teeth of a crosscut saw. Everything was inky blue-black; the darkness had swallowed all the colours. As he got into the car, it began to rain.

Inside the car he watched the rain falling softly onto the windscreen, almost as if the sky was crying in slow motion. The darkness beyond was a blur, a dissolving palette of dark blue ink and wheezing silver-grey moonlight. He turned on the radio, a voice was speaking about the weather. Tomorrow there would be rain. It was already raining; it was already tomorrow. He would greet no more tomorrows. The rain falling onto the windscreen made hardly a sound. The radio spoke but he didn't listen to the words, it was just a disembodied noise, a voice that made no sense. So many things made no sense in the dark, but he remembered the taste of her tears.