I had a conversation with the sunset last night.

Having begun to paint her vistas in pinks and deep blues while she skipped between the houses beyond my front porch, I commented that she looked rather lovely and asked if she minded that I join her. She did not answer, although I already knew that I was welcome. It was but a few minutes prior that she’d come around, peering so intently through the pane of my window, looking for me, as if proffering a religion or selling a product.

There on my front porch, a glencairn in hand, she sent for a special radiance and cast it to me. I lifted my glass to catch it, and was right in the raising. A single, squinting eye toward the glass, the Jameson Select Reserve Black Barrel held her luster as it turned in the glencairn, and with my continued gazing, the world around me was softer, quieter, more golden.

Stealing a sip, “I have enough to share,” I mentioned to her and looked away to my front door. “Shall I fetch you a drop or two?”

She said nothing, but instead shifted her posture and took back a portion of her brilliance. She warned that she was well into her departure and would soon be fully gone.

“I’ll speak of the whiskey, then,” I offered. “That is, if you’ll listen.”

The leaves of the trees jostled in the wind, and with each flutter her trickling beams sought my face, affirming that she so dearly desired that I would tell her of things she might never know.

“Can you smell it?” I asked. “It’s the ambience of a cloudless morning, dear madam – a place in your light at the breakfast table with a slice of buttered toast and the choice of honey or orange marmalade.”

She smiled. I smiled, too.

“And there’s a bit of your warmth in this meal,” I continued. “It’s given in the sipping. The bread is fresh and the butter has so easily overlayed its surface, lying in wait for a selection of topping. It would seem that the marmalade was the choice.”

She smiled again, but it was much fainter than before.

“Hurry,” her dimming confided. “I cannot remain for another.”

I savored and thought carefully.

“The finish is as a flickering candle set upon the seashore. Its flame does not keep with the breezes, but the same winds give life to its smoldering wick. In this is a fine malt, and this time, the honey.”

No sooner than I’d spoken these last words, was I beset by the darkness and the nighttime noises of crickets and the gloating frogs in the pond.

“I’m glad I was able to share this with you,” I whispered to myself. “It is a fine dram.”

I rose to my feet and took one last look to the fading horizon. I lifted my glass. “This one will serve us again, dear lady. Perhaps at another of summer’s eves.”

The pinks and deep blues had become the beginnings of a pitched black amidst an astral sky. The moon was there. I only noticed him as I stepped to retreat from the oncoming insects.

I paused and stole another sip. “I have enough to share,” I mentioned to him and motioned to my front door. “Shall I fetch you a drop or two?”