We are starting off 2026 with a call for submissions that emerged while I was trying to find a poem that I believed was titled "Blue Hour." I thought I remembered a poem about the time of day when the light appears a bit bluer than at noon or sunrise or sunset.
The transition from day to night (and vice versa) is divided into several phases based on the Sun's position relative to the horizon. While we often use words like "dusk" and "twilight" interchangeably in casual conversation, they have precise astronomical and poetic meanings.
Dawn refers to the specific moment the Sun reaches a certain angle before sunrise. Dusk refers to the specific moment the Sun reaches those same angles after sunset. Twilight is the duration of time between these points.
Poets often use these times symbolically, just as they use the seasons. Dawn almost always represents rebirth, hope, "blushing," awakening, and the "white hour" and is optimistic or renewal-focused. Twilight represents aging, memory, the end of things, regret, and is melancholic or meditative.
More poetic terms for these times of day includes the "gloaming," a term with Scottish roots that comes from the Old English glōm, meaning shadows and twilight. It specifically refers to the evening twilight. Unlike the scientific "dusk," gloaming is an emotional term evoking a sense of quiet, soft light.
This time was thought to be a "thin place" where the veil between worlds is believed to be weakest. Also known as "Eventide,"in Celtic folklore, the gloaming is when the "Fair Folk" or spirits are most likely to appear.
While "Golden Hour" implies light, "gloaming" implies the creeping of shadows (glōm). Also known as the "Magic Hour" by photographers, this time occurs when the Sun is just above the horizon (roughly the first hour after sunrise or the last hour before sunset). The light is warm, soft, and golden because it has to travel through more of the Earth's atmosphere, which scatters the blue light and emphasizes reds and oranges.
All of this came from my searching for that "Blue Hour" poem. This time occurs when the Sun is just below the horizon and the remaining light is dominated by blue wavelengths, creating a cool, moody, and ethereal atmosphere. This blue light also occurs in the stillness of the early morning.
While the term "the blue hour" (or l'heure bleue) is frequently used by photographers, filmmakers and novelists to describe the twilight just before sunrise or after sunset, it appears in poetry with a specific focus on the stillness and liminality of the morning before dawn.
This liminal hour just before dawn was called by the ancient Greeks the “wolf hour.” I did find that poet Louise Glück used the term “blue hour,” and Mary Oliver wrote in her many poems about this almost-but-not-yet-light time of day. It is a threshold time when the world hasn’t yet decided what kind of day it will be. It's a kind of suspended moment.
Arthur Rimbaud is often cited as one of the first to use the phrase poetically. He wrote about "aux premières heures bleues" (at the first blue hours) in his 1872 poem "Est-elle almée?" to refer to the very early morning. The specific term "Blue Hour" didn't gain widespread popularity until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, heavily influenced by French Impressionism and later by the technical terminology of photography.
Most classical poets (like Wordsworth or Keats) preferred terms like "the grey dawn," "the gloaming," or "the rosy-fingered dawn."
I found a poetry collection titled Blue Hour: Poems by Carolyn Forché, and I found several poems with that title. but never found the poem I was remembering. Maybe it doesn't exist.
I spent a morning looking up all these terms and finding poems about the words we use to describe times of day based on the light.
I ended up writing a poem myself about that light that is sometimes called (as is my poem) "God Rays."
Here are three public domain poems that deal in some way with these "ages of the day" (a phrase I borrowed from Frost).
Emily Dickinson often used dawn as a metaphor for hope or the end of a struggle. In this poem, she describes some physical preparation for the day as light moves from fear to calm. Her smoothing hair and readying dimples are real starts to the new day, and night and its fright are reduced to a brief, fading memory.
When Night is almost done
And Sunrise grows so near
That we can touch the Spaces
It’s time to smooth the Hair
And get the Dimples ready
And wonder we could care
For that old faded Midnight
That frightened but an Hour
Her poem that begins "There’s a certain Slant of light," find the light of a winter afternoon to be heavy and oppressive.
There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons – That oppresses,
like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes...
"Dawn," a brief poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, personifies a sleeping night and a blushing dawn.
An angel, robed in spotless white,
Bent down and kissed the sleeping Night.
Night woke to blush; the sprite was gone.
Men saw the blush and called it Dawn.
In this odd poem, "Flower-Gathering" by Robert Frost, a relationship moves from morning's glow to the grey gloaming, and the "ages of the day" are used as a metaphor for the changing relationship.
I left you in the morning,
And in the morning glow,
You walked a way beside me
To make me sad to go.
Do you know me in the gloaming,
Gaunt and dusty grey with roaming?
Are you dumb because you know me not,
Or dumb because you know?
All for me? And not a question
For the faded flowers gay
That could take me from beside you
For the ages of a day?
They are yours, and be the measure
Of their worth for you to treasure,
The measure of the little while
That I’ve been long away.
In "Clenched Soul" by Pablo Neruda, and other poems he often wrote of the "blue night" dropping on the world, and twilight is a time of loss and solitude.
We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world...
Our February issue will feature poems that are concerned with a certain time of day - dawn, dusk, twilight, gloaming, blue hour, magic hour, golden hour, sunrise, sunset, or even one of the scientific names for the times of day. What can that time of day, or the passage to or from it be a metaphor for to you?Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) was a prolific yet private American poet. She lived a reclusive life at her family homestead, writing nearly 1,800 poems characterized by slant rhyme and unconventional punctuation. Only ten were published during her lifetime; the rest were discovered posthumously, cementing her legacy.
Paul Laurence Dunbar, born in 1872 and the author of numerous collections of poetry and prose, was one of the first African American poets to gain national recognition.
One of the most celebrated figures in American poetry, Robert Frost was the author of numerous poetry collections. Born in San Francisco in 1874, he lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont and died in Boston in 1963.
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"God Light"
