August Evenfall

The evening is an exhalation, a lover's sigh in his beloved's ear, hot, moist, ending in expectant stillness.

His arms wrapped about her swollen middle, her ripe, gravid form, a caress, an embrace, possessive, proud, he stands at her back as darkness falls, pulling her close, murmuring the song of the crickets, the cicadas, the frogs. He hushes the birds, chuckling as they settle into their nests, kisses his lady's neck, sighs again, and the evening rustles, the trees flutter their late summer leaves, return to their dusk dozing.

Bats flit and swoop, catching their fill of the humming, whining, hovering mosquitoes.

Blue evening light pours through the woods, steeps the trees in shadow, changes colors to greyscale. A few clouds linger overhead, and the humid heat of evenfall calls up beads of sweat on my scalp, sends them rolling down my neck, my back. I could almost believe they are my love's kisses...

I am in the back yard, listening, breathing, feeling the pulse of this evening as it descends into velvet night. It is a living thing, swelling and ebbing around me, embracing me, cradling me in shadow and sound - the air is so thick with itself, I feel as though I could lean back and be borne up by it.

Like the earth around me, I feel ripe with possibility, as if I will soon bear fruit, harvest what my efforts have planted.

I only have a few moments in this peace before it is shattered - several aircraft, a motorcycle, a neighbor calling for his cat, the Evil Genius looking for me to ask about his father's dinner, a truck on the street...all at once, tugged from that one moment of Summer distilled and back to life and motion, brilliant artificial light and hours extending long past sunset and closer to dawning.

With a sigh, I turn back to the house, pull myself through the taffy thick air and back to the chilled, dry, air-conditioned house, only a few mosquito love bites to remind me of my brief reprieve.