Darklight dawning

I know it was six o'clock because the church in the town centre had just finished ringing it out. It had been dark, fully dark, by three or four that afternoon. All days this far into winter are. It's night before the day has really begun.

So it was dark, but there in the dark I heard the birds start to sing.

It was the singing you hear at dawn, the long trilling leap and fall of new things beginning. And it was so clear and joyous that although I had heard the bells ring I still thought, perhaps, perhaps it was I who was wrong and it was not night after all.

Perhaps I had stepped sideways through to the morning.

There wasn't anyone else about on the path, so I couldn't ask. I just stood and listened, as they sang the colours of dawn into the night sky.

Maybe it's not such an unusual thing. But I prefer to think it was.