Darkness

I wanted to see if I could keep my poinsettia growing all year so it would bloom again next year. While reading about their care, I learned that starting in October, poinsettias need 14 straight hours of complete darkness per night in order to bloom. No indoor light, no street light, nothing. Interesting metaphor.. darkness before blooming.

More literally, I'm wondering since we are almost never in complete darkness--there's always a street light or a house light or building security lights--how have we changed the planet and the life it sustains? I wonder if there are species that have died out or don't exist here simply because we don't let them have darkness.

Sometimes I get far enough out of the city to look up into the night sky and see it full of stars. Every time it startles me. Not seeing the stars, per se, but the fact that I had forgotten their presence. They are always there, constant and beautiful, but I become accustomed to their invisibility. Glimpsing them turns into a miracle.

Dar Williams wrote a lyric that resonates with me:

"What kind of people make a city

where you can't see the sky and you can't feel the ground?"

What kind, indeed?