I was biking in the countryside of Montague one summer day (remember those?), and I pedaled past a house with a substantial side yard furnished only with a small table and two simple chairs. Later, when I was home, I watched the sunset from my back porch, and found myself envisioning two people sitting at that side yard table in the twilight.

Maybe they would be speaking in hushed tones, respectfully, as if each twilight were a wake for the day just lived.

Or maybe they would be sharing an intimate moment, or having a rhetorical argument (“discussion”), versions of which they have had, spoken or unspoken, hundreds, perhaps thousands of times before.

Maybe they would be touching hands or feet.

Or maybe they no longer saw each other, the way you don’t really see what’s on your regular route to work.

Maybe they would be reading the same or different genres of books, one of them intermittently interrupting the other to read aloud paragraphs they’d decided the other should hear.

Or maybe they would each be entranced with their phone, typing or scrolling assiduously at intervals.

Maybe one of them would be having a dish of low-fat black raspberry yogurt, and the other a dish of salted caramel ice cream.

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Or maybe they would each be having a glass of wine, which one of them would follow with at least one, possibly several more.

Maybe they would be relishing the acceptance of their child by an elite college, a glory made more radiant by their wine.

Or maybe they would be sharing the intestinal sorrow of a child overmatched by life beyond their control, the edges of that sadness made duller by the wine.

Maybe they would be talking about Donald Trump, about whom they agree, and about whom the people they place themselves amongst agree.

Or maybe one of them would have been diagnosed recently with a progressive illness, and the other would be trying to be there for them and feeling like they are falling short at doing so.

Maybe they would be making what is described as small talk, the accumulation of which over a lifetime together becomes a grand opera of their coupling.

Or maybe they would be talking about what would come after twilight — the night, tomorrow, on vacation, after retirement, forever.

Maybe they would be reminiscing about their first meeting, the coincidence, serendipity of it all.

Or maybe one of them would be thinking about the limitless possibility of their first days together, the luminous romance of their first year, and wondering whether what they have now could be called mature love or some other word or words for which they choose not to seek.

Maybe they would be watching for the cars that pass by infrequently, their headlights like mobile Christmas bulbs gliding through the feral trees, the sound of their engines gentle hymns.

Or maybe they would not be talking or thinking or watchful at all, just absorbing the wordless lyrics of light and darkness melting into each other, and dissolving into the melody of their silent selves.

Amherst resident Richard McCarthy, a longtime columnist at the Springfield Republican, writes a monthly column for the Gazette.