And The Stars Pierced Through It

We watched the eastern sky flush a pure, cloudless rose, darker at the horizon, paler above. Minute by minute the horizon's darkness defined itself as the blue-domed shadow of the earth cast on the sky, thinning at its upward arc to violet, lavender, pale lilac, but clearly defined, steadily darkening upward until it swallowed all of the sky's light and the stars pierced through it. Every night we watched the earth shadow climb the hollow sky, and every dawn we watched the same sinking blue shadow disappear at the instant when the sun splintered sparks off the rim.

--Wallace Stegner