Evening observations under the sun -Prose piece by Robert Fullarton Copyright 2016

Evening observations under the sun

-Prose piece

by Robert Fullarton

Copyright 2016

The streetlamps were glowing like candlesticks positioned neatly in a row that stretched out onto the seafront promenade. The evening time was departing; the orange glow of the setting sun sank behind the fine Georgian mansions that proudly stood on the hilltops above the sea. These fine mansions are the antiques of old English rule, eloquent and opulent in appearance, one has to gaze and imagine a secret life behind closed doors, a life of luxury, a life or privilege and comfort.

Evening parties were being hosted on this balmy late spring evening. Time passed into twilight, where amber reflections of the sun turned into an indigo imprint that painted the shadows of the horizon in a breathlessly beautiful impression. The sun could no longer be seen but a glowing twilight hung, like the last breathes of a dying sun over the rooftops of the township. The world of men, of trades, businesses and iron indifference to fellow man had been shed in the layers of the evening light.

The fishermen came in to dock in the last minutes of the light, to inspect their catch, hoping for a profit, yearning for home, after several overnight shifts. Such men were overstretched and felt over extended in their hearts, they were the weary men who laboured like dogs, with no college education, they relied upon their nautical knowledge of the sea, their manual skills and taut command of life itself.

A witness of the sunset who had been standing on a hillock had been transported to a beautiful memory, alive in the present, he became aware of his own life, its preciousness and potential in the face of the world’s anonymity.

Surely he thought to himself,“both God and fate itself know my name by heart, despite the general indifference of other people in this world!” 

His heart was like that of an artist's, filled with inspiration,  but he only had to look at the encroaching city to feel downtrodden for a world that would not listen to the warnings in life, nor ever know people like him. For he was an alien in his very own city, and though it felt like he had ascended a mountain, he was in reality only descending from a hillock into the cool evening din. Still the memory was moulded on his soul and it felt like love, and it bore the desire in him to share such love with his fellow human beings, in charity and servitude.