My beloved tells me that ‘gloaming’ is dusk, to those of a Scottish persuasion, but the Oxford English dictionary suggests that Twilight is also Gloaming, and astronomical twilight is either just before dawn or just after sundown. So I hope today’s joyful title makes reasonable etymological sense, anyway.

There are so many metaphors for that sense of a better future beyond any current sadness. Indeed, it’s hard to write about that hope without drifting straight into metaphor, symbol or simile, so engrained are these aphorisms in our consciousness. I’ve been haunting the VisualVerse.org website for the past couple of weeks, waiting to see if the kind editors liked my poem for this month. I’d tried to keep it simple, reflective but different, in response to the image stimulus: a leopard of the night.

Ah ha! The brightness strikes through the gloom! My Dream of Life is live and well. Let the metaphors resonate through the gloaming, shall we?