Sitting on the dock of the bay. Wasting time, watching the tide roll in and roll back out again. The girl sits at the end of the fishing pier, framed in the golden late afternoon light of a setting sun. The artist can’t tell if she is twenty four or fourteen, but he thinks maybe it says more about him than it does about her.

Standing ready at the easel, near the end of the pier, the artist’s eye has found this beautifully peaceful woman as she sits in repose watching the days end. He picks up the brush, and as he begins mixing colors, he wonders what she is thinking about.

Maybe the wolves of winter, shaggy fur coats laced with white flakes, staring out at the world that surrounds them, coats them, freezes them.

Maybe she thinks of the circus clown, sorrow mingled with joy, laughter and tears sharing proximity like subway riders.

Or perhaps she is simply gazing out at sea, waiting for someone to return on one of the many fishing boats that ply their trade from this harbor. He is drawn to this mysterious figure at the end of the pier, his eye caught by her serenity, held by her dignity. He dips the brush into a well of paint and begins lightly stroking the canvas, afraid to press too hard for fear he will dispel this delicate moment.

It has been a long day of working the canvas, in the hot sun, the salty air and the cool breeze feels good on his skin as the tools of his trade begin to transform the woman from a passing moment, to a moment caught in time, pressed into canvas by horsehair and the artist’s eye. He is pulled in by her majesty, and feels that she has some substance to her, depth lurking beneath her smooth cocoa skin.

He cannot know but he suspects, because she does not carry the trappings of the age. There is no cell phone in the hand, connected to an ear unwilling to be in one place and unable to leave another. There is no iPad, no iPhone, no i-anything. Just the woman, sitting and gazing out towards the sea, watching the sun as it begins to sink below the horizon. There is not much time left, he knows how quickly ocean sunsets happen.

It has been a pleasure, but like all things in life, whether pleasurable or not, it must end, and he is stroking the canvas lightly but rapidly. It is a race against time. Ah, now he has captured the moment as he feels it, and he is savoring the moment of glory that all artists seek and few find on a regular basis. It is here, in the goldenredpinkgrayblue of the onrushing dusk that the artist realizes he has more questions than answers about this woman.

He is seized with desire, to be twenty years younger, and to be able to talk with this woman of grace, beauty, substance, but he knows now that would spoil the moment of artistic tension. Some questions are better left unasked. But the artists instinct can never be totally silenced, and he has come up with one answer for her. Here in the dying light of the now sunken sun, he realizes who she is. She is Dusk Woman.