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“Except those images weren’t exact captures of reality. No, the Camera Eye was also suffused with what photographers called the Golden Hour—the gilt-tinted hour following sunrise and preceding sunset, when the world was awash with russet rays and even the meanest streets were aglow as if in an Arthurian legend. Every moment spent with John was like that, reality beyond reality. Richer, realer, rawer than reality. These were the moments she remembered most.”
― Ray Smith, The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen

“They hike almost three miles without incident, and it's amazing to watch the colors leach back into the desert after the day's blanching. There's a moment, Lydia realizes, or no, more than a moment - a span of perhaps fifteen minutes just at twilight - when the desert is the most perfect place that exists. The temperature, the light, the colors, all hang and linger at some unflawed precipice, like the cars of a roller coaster ticking ever so slowly over their apex before the crash. The light droops ever farther from the sky, and Lydia can smell the heat of the day wicking away from her skin.”
― Jeanine Cummins, American Dirt

“Golden hour, magic hour, l’heure bleue. Evenings when the beauty of the changing sky made us both go still and dreamy. Sunlight falling at an angle across the lawn so that it touched our elevated feet, then moved up our bodies like a long slow blessing.”
― Sigrid Nunez, What Are You Going Through

“Despite their illusive nature, twilight never fails to provide a magical quality to the day—a transitional space between day and night, light and dark, head and heart...”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“The prairie I grew up on teaches you to notice, to pay attention. The yolk of the sun as it slides across the dome of the sky streaking the world orange and indigo. The swish of grass in afternoon breeze. The screech of a grackle. During the Golden hour on the prairie, the North Dakota palette reveals the subtle differences between ochre, umber, and sienna.”
― Taylor Brorby, Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land

“The oblong tower of the church, with its wrought-iron steeple, caught the last reflections of the sun against the hills. This is what a cinematographer would call the golden hour, the glowing time just after the sun sinks below the horizon and before the dark sets in. It's the watercolor skies--- discreet layers of cotton-candy pink, dusky rose, and periwinkle, when the fields are their deepest green, and the wheat has a halo that rises from the surface. We were standing on the medieval ramparts, the walls that once protected this small community from the hostilities of the outside world. Just below us was a field of lavender, the rows tidy and symmetrical. Just behind, a hedge of rosemary bushes. In the distance I could make out the summit of Reillanne, golden city on a hill.”
― Elizabeth Bard, Picnic in Provence: A Memoir with Recipes

“A Magic Hour’s Dreaming by Stewart Stafford

Is there a sight more fair than wheaten fields,
Awaiting the sun's ambush to potently ignite?
Colour vibrates beyond the eye revealed,
To live, dance and breathe in honeyed light.

Nature’s palette, painted hues so bright,
Invites the bees to sip and man to dream,
Of engineered art, dazzling to the sight,
Authored lightning in a celestial seam.

The creator’s canvas, mint beyond decay,
Invites the inner child to replenish at source,
Where Nature’s staff casts shadows away,
Friendships bond as a trickling stream's course.

An eyeblink flash carved in history's tree,
Treasured riches pooled of those by our side.
For in sepia’s sunflower memory,
We court the hand of an agreeable bride.

Fading birdsong underscores this bottled time,
In butterfly hearts, the hourglass stilled sublime.
Autumn's leaves, ochre embers, curtsied fall,
Farewell Summer, until roused in New Year's call.

© 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford