Decades ago, before teaching, after a long middle shift packing trucks, I drove slowly home, out of the city, over empty streets. Windows rolled all the way down, I was content to ride in the quiet clearing out from every darkened house.
My parents and younger sister were already asleep. I ate something quickly and slipped up the stairs. We had no air conditioning. Every window opened to the night air.
I sat for a few minutes in the darkness of my room. Looking out to the corner, one yellow streetlight gave off a glow filtered through the dense foliage of big maples. The slow wind brushed them and the light gapped and shut, yawed and shifted. Nothing passed by. All of nature seemed in repose, except me, far gone and tired but wanting to give over just a few minutes more to the soft world and the soft flurries of the breeze and the soft dreaming that came before sleep.
Photograph by Robert Adams
