Written last evening

It’s a beautiful evening, and I’m sitting on the back deck writing this.  The air is cool, with a gentle breeze, as scores of song birds and swallows flit back and forth, snatching insects and popping from branch to branch to find friends and a lovely spot for the night’s roost.  The sky is bright blue, while pillows of low-lit, shadowed clouds float benignly past.

It’s the way I remember summer evenings as a kid, when us neighborhood kids would get together after dinner and play tag or whiffle ball until the daylight gradually was lost.  Then, we would play hide-and-seek across two big yards, back and front; our home base an out-of-place abandoned telephone pole standing tall between the two backyards, relegated to duty as one anchor of a clothesline.  Running and hiding, night would deepen, and we would be visited by fireflies; until finally mosquitoes or shouts from our parents would pull us home to the dull-lit structures that now seemed warming beacons–accepting and protecting from the mysterious unknown, full dark night.