Gill McGrath© sunrise [28th October 2014]
I simply didn’t realize when I took this photo four weeks ago that this might be the last glimpse of the waking morning sun as I see it from the rabbit field close to the house, the gate, the pole. I have been spoiled. The sun has been moving around me on all sides, all year, in full view over the fields, and the valley along a wide horizon. It has also been playing with the lines which beg me to measure her slow progress. Now the morning sun has finally moved right out of this generous frame and is forced to come out behind a dark wood (to the right) at the top of this sometimes windy sometimes frosty hill…..where I will leave her for a bit.

But I know where she is; I know precisely where she is singing that song, even though there is a permanent thick miserable cloud glued to the horizon which she must be always trying to climb up and over….. hardly stopping early afternoon before the daily roller coaster ride downhill, into some thinner cloud right opposite my house, where I might catch her. It might only be for a short glimpse of her and sometimes it is the first glimpse of the sun for the first time all day, but it is here the sun finds she can wave for a dramatic colourful few minutes and say goodnight…. after a day that hardly lit up!

So if that is it….how long is the day now?

If I stand outside by the back door and stretch out my arms horizontally at ‘three o’clock’ and twist myself slightly to the left still keeping my arms carefully at the three o’clock position, one arm will be pointing directly to where the morning sun comes up right now, while the other arm will be pointing to exactly where the sun will fall… Which means the space you see between my arms …… is as long as the day! Yeah!