Write a descriptive essay which captures a sense of the difference between dawn and dusk and celebrates both the beginning and the end of the day (2019)
Ever wonder what a full marks descriptive essay looks like? Here it is, unchanged, from the 2019 paper, worth 100 marks. You may also like: Leaving Cert English Complete Guide (€).
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When I was younger my Nanny used to teach me about the dawn chorus. It was a symphony of birdsong, little chirps of tits blending with the twitter of the blackbird, all overridden by the gorgeous melody of the song thrush. She isn’t much to look at, that song thrush – brown, with speckles on her wings – but to hear her is something else. She can put orchestras to shame, her uncomplicated tune of high notes and low notes, pitches and tones, the most organic thing in the world.
I rise with the sun today, lifting myself from the empty bed, that patch of dark warmth where I lay quickly evaporating into the morning air. The knot of anxiety that takes up near permanent residence in my stomach must be loosened at this time of day, undone before the rest of the world awakens and can see its presence too clearly.
To do so, I go outside, and breath in that new air. Everything is new, even though it is just the same as yesterday. The petrichor of dew on the fresh green grass is as new as the clock striking five in the morning; a constant of our lives and yet original each time it repeats itself. There are no cars on the road to disrupt it. To send the dew drops flying off the leaves of the cherry blossoms that line the garden, or to tear apart those tearstain spider webs that glisten as the sun begins to rise in a monument of nature’s genius.
That sunrise too is magnificent – all whites and yellows coming up softly over those pink blossoms on the trees. The sun is like the petrichor – constant yet changing. Today she is untainted by the dirty reds that often meld her climb. A few soft clouds are all that accompany her – but the sailors need not fear them – there is no red warning in that sky for them to heed. The clouds are but fluffy cumulous balls on the horizon, painted by the sun.
I wonder why we are so taken with chasing sunsets as they unfold, yet will continuously choose the tranquillity or turbulence of sleep over their morning sisters. And yet, I too close my eyes on that vision of beauty as I begin to meditate. I allow myself to breath deeply, to hear the birds, to feel the dew that lingers in the air. I know that soon the rest of the world will wake, and postmen will trundle in their vans to deliver handfuls of letters while men shout at their wives about why their shirt is unironed before they begin their gruelling commute to work. But I also know that in a few moments I will sit at my kitchen table with a cup of broken down leaves flavoured with lemon and ginger, and wait for the sun to finish her initial climb, to complete her birth, as the old Egyptians would have said, except for them ‘she’ was a he. I will let my lips burn a little from my tea, and prepare for the day to come.
***
As I watch the sun die, it is not tea that burns my lips but vodka, scorching down my throat despite its sugary mixture. I am in a garden still, but this time someone else’s, and that knot in my stomach that I loosened so gently this morning is being burned by the ethanol and excitement of the lively promising dusk.
Hoots of young men and cackles of young women are thick in the air, combining with the heavy beat of music vibrating out of the old, red brick home and into the crowded garden. People play games around me, both with cups and ping pong balls and with their words.
The brother sunset is murkier than his morning sister, stained with reds and purples, yet just as beautiful. He makes everyone around me look more beautiful too; bodies melding and intertwining in the long light and shadows, the burning orange catching blue eyes unawares and lighting them up, or turning brown ones into pools of liquid gold. Skin sheens with radiant sweat, and lips are damp and sticky, petrichor replaced with the smell of fermented apple juice and the press of skin on skin.
I feel alive. Energised. Ecstatic. I feel I can go anywhere or do anything, that the thick August air is dancing with possibilities. The music, though far from that of a beautiful songbird, enters my veins and floods them with life, making me need to move, to feel, to be.
I know somewhere a boy and girl watch the sunset peacefully on the beach, watch as he sinks below the churning tide, casting his burning flames over the water. They whisper sweet nothings as distant stars begin to dot navy with white and make promises as sure and temporary as the tides. But they are not me.
I am amongst the mesh of bodies, of faces I know and half know and will never know. That is the beauty of this dusk you see. To live in that very moment, to dance with people you will never see again. There is the potential hanging in that garden to have your heart broken or your heart made, to feel a lover or a stranger’s hands on your skin, to know those blue eyes caught off guard in the reddening light or to never see beyond them.
Creatures move about in the bushes as I take a moment to recollect outside. I see a hedgehog peek out, his tiny nose twitching and beady eyes glossy with fright. He is either very brave or very confused, just like ourselves. He is still for a moment, our eyes meeting. I raise my glass to him, a toast of nocturnal creatures. For that is what we both are, and I know now why we sleep through sunsets – we are beings of the night, not meant for that heavenly beauty of morning, lest we taint it. The hedgehog scurries away.
Alone again, with only a sliver of sun left in the sky, I return to the house, carried as though on winged feet, feeling as light and free and one can be. I throw myself into the tangle of bodies, lose myself in their rhythm and beat, jumping up and down with the mass as we pulse to the music. As if we are one living organ, but cells in the host of our life.
As the sun fades, night falls, a night which I know will die with sleep.
***
I awaken the next morning; I rarely achieve more than a handful of hours of sleep. My eyes and head are heavy and familiar and I feel my very mind still pulsing as though it was made of that mesh of bodies from last night.
Everything and nothing happened between now and then. Love and loss, pleasure and pain, joy and heartache. It does not matter now. The new day has just begun again, the song thrush sings her sweet song.
I feel each part of my body, then rise, as I always do. The petrichor and first rays of sunlight leak through my curtains as I rise out of my own empty bed once more.
As I take the slow steps to the outdoors, to relieve that knot in my stomach, I allow that morning light to fill me up, leave me yellow, yellow, yellow.
And I watch the sunrise once more.
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