One Evening In Early Winter

I was out in the backyard just now, checking on a little fire I have going. It’s been a bit stormy and wet, good weather for a fire and I figured I better burn that acacia tree that blew over 2 years ago. It was re-growth from the tree that blew over two years before that and if the trend continues we’re due for it to blow over again this winter. When it does I think we’ll put a jacaranda there instead.

I looked up into the patchy night sky, rafts of white and black clouds racing each other around, voids dotted with brilliant stars being exposed and erased and re-drawn There was a light behind the clouds, fading bright and dim as thicker and thinner cloud cover passed by but never becoming fully exposed. It was bright, bright as a low-flying aircraft, half as bright as the moon, and stationary. The clouds formed a halo around it and it seemed to grow and shrink, pulsing there to the north-west, about 40 degrees from the horizon.

Eventually the clouds shredded themselves apart to reveal the source to be Venus, good old Venus shinning brilliantly and I sighed in small relief. I got no problem with Venus. They pre-heat the probes on Venus.