Hello, darkness my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again.

So goes the beginning of Simon and Garfunkel’s song the Sound of Silence. And so it goes each fall as Daylight Saving Time comes to an end once again. On Sunday evening the sun will set at 4:34 p.m.

The leaves, recently transported from up high to down low, know how to talk to the darkness. They crunch underfoot each evening after work. The sound is there in the daylight, too, but the sun has a way of swallowing up nature’s rhythm section.

The whispers of wind also grow louder as the dark descends earlier, or at least it seems this way. The howling presence just outside the door a reminder of the wildness of the world, something daylight seems to tame.

But what about those for whom the language of the dark has become truly foreign? Daylight provides essential vitamins, but what of the night? True, too much darkness can be hazardous for many. Depression on a quiet Island in winter is a very real danger. And yet, embracing the sun’s early curtain call without calling for false encores of lights or the eerie glow of technology, can have its benefits.

More sleep, for one. The sound of silence, too.