October 16: Last light

At day's end the sun finally appeared long enough to cast its golden, dying light onto the west-facing slope of Mount Battie. Scraps of blue sky appeared, orange leaves began to shine. And a cardinal chipped and chipped from somewhere out of sight, shy bird, no doubt pecking at bird seed on the ground below the bird feeders.

Cardinal's chip intensifies
as the day's last glow
fades from the mountainside.