From Killiney Hill

An 'etherised' evening? Here's one
bloodied with nerves exposed, going night-blue, numb. 

Extraordinary sunset on Killiney Hill this evening. It had been a clear, cold sunny day. I noticed the strangeness of the light as I drove out to catch the last light, Lola in the back seat, excited at the thought of another walk. Just before parking I pulled in at that low wall on what I call Billionaire's Row, a balcony over the twilit bay. But Howth was lost in a kind of pink-maroon band of haze, the sea below pale blue as one of Turner's gentler washed-out watercolour studies. 

I decided to take the tripod as now it was definitely dusk. It was very cold, my thin fleece mittens not helping much. I walked briskly so by the time we emerged from the wood there was still some light in the sky. The sea all the way out to Bray was a still a delicate, powder blue, the mountains seeming no more solid, brush-strokes of smoke. Over towards Kippure the light was more intense (see above), as were the twilight-blues. Between, the city was a shimmery, ashy, embery plain. the intensity of the reds and blues reminded me of a sunset I'd seen in San Francisco, out near Ocean Beach. If only it were that warm. My fingers kept going entirely numb, making it difficult to negotiate between keeping Lola from tearing off into the dark and balancing the camera on a tripod, bracketing, etc. Despite all this, I enjoyed the walk. The last time I'd come here, only a couple of months ago, I'd said goodbye to a good friend, before he headed back to Canada. And always ghosting these infrequent visits to the hill is the memory of a wonderful bright, lively American journalist I met in 1990, Mary Belferman, who died about seven years later from ovarian cancer. I dedicated a poem to her in my first collection.