Sunset

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. The green came silently with thunder of ants and soft suns at dusk. I could feel the old man\u27s bones softening imperceptibly day by day. The distant brittleness that had somehow crystalized with each succeeding snow vanished from his eyes and rounded itself into a haziness that settled at the tobaccoed corners of his mouth and showed itself only here and there in a cragged upturned word. He was eighty-seven years old. He had seen his springs, he had beaten his winters