Time on This Planet

There is a vast, spatial poetry to the movement of time and planets. The seasons turn on equinoxes and solstices, an unending ebb and flow of light throughout the galaxy, as planets turn and shift on their axes, restless in their slow, gigantic relationship with the sun. On this planet - perhaps on others - the presence of people in the daylight is also manipulated, hours brought backwards and forwards artificially, our days subtly rearranged to give us the most daylight possible. It has only just occurred to me that in some way this must happen all over the industrialised world. Last night the clocks went forward one hour in this country and immediately the daylight - especially on a bright day like today - seemed to be here longer. One of the darkness-thoughts of Christmas is the fact that it gets dark at 4.30pm, whereas tonight it was light at 7.30pm. We have three more hours of evening daylight at the end of March than we do at the end of December. Changing the clocks, realigning our habitation of daylight, is an event on a cosmic scale, a small reminder of the movement of the planets, the music of the spheres. It happens twice a year and is strangely beautiful.