Dusk falls on the barn like an old sack, dropping starlight on the ground like the dusty remains of broken bricks. The grass, in dull patches, resembles a balding tennis ball and hosts a chorus of cicadas. Out on the edge of the yard, just beyond the reach of porch light, the rusting skeleton of an old station wagon sits patient, waiting for a restoration that might have had a shot a decade earlier.

Part-framed by a stained and broken window, an aging bench vice grips long-abandoned steel, ever ready. In the calm breeze, leaves rustle gently, washing fractal shadows over the rough ivy borders that absorbed the fences and gates back when times hadn't changed yet.

A lone fox hops down cautiously from the densely overgrown garden planter that blocks the door to the dilapidated tool shed, stalking the tiny fragments of crisped leaves that kick up in the little whirlwinds that form in the corners of the courtyard and between the hay bales that stock the barn.

Surrounded by deepening night, interrupted by the pools of warm lamp light that flicker in and out of existence with the breeze, a playground for curious hunters and their young, growing up in the graveyard of active life, since retired.

A chill creeps around the woeful door fittings, pushing the outside in and dragging the inside out like the breath of a sleeping dragon. Soup cools on the kitchen table as bread dries and the hanging bulb, bare and unpretentious, swings, deliberately, from its tied-off root on the oak beam that holds the roof up.

In the living room, a small log crackles on the fire, shedding gold, making dancers of the inanimate, picture shows of plain walls. A pair of cosy, green velvetine armchairs, pointed at the heart of the hearth, depict a calm that no city could know.

Up the wooden stairs, thick and worn, a checkered curtain makes two worlds from one, as a fairytale bed hosts a sleeping sheepdog, feet and ears twitching, deep in dream. This cooling season, peaceful and drifting, like the deep sigh of acceptance it solicits from all who see it, covers every fallen leaf and every broken twig in beautiful calm, as land prepares to sleep until the spring.