“E” is for Evening Sounds

The sun sets. And our neighbor’s dinner call to her children echoes out of a nearby holler. The clang of our own dinner bell and the whir of the coffee grinder, the bleats from sheep demanding their due and bellows of cattle from farms up and down the valley all signal a change from day to night.

Deeper in that evening the frogs join the chorus by booming a query for love and answered in summer by locusts in the millions. The owls curiously hoot in a secret language exchanging tips, we imagine, on which field has the plumpest mice. We move out of the kitchen and settle into chairs on the front porch and listen for the night to begin. The sun’s final glow, hours after sunset, is claimed by the stars and moon which were waiting for their showier cousin to exit. On cue coyotes enter the valley singing to each other with weird triumphant yips. The evening ends and night begins.