I recall coming home from a long weekend, maybe up north at a summer cottage or from a trip out to the big lake, Lake Michigan. We'd get off the expressway at Lane Avenue, drive down to Valley, then Valley to Lake Michigan Drive. It was probably around 7pm, the sun already behind the trees, casting long shadows across street and home. I remember staring out the passenger side window, in the backseat of our '67 Impala, looking at those long shadows, the rays of the fading but yet still brilliant sun striking through the gaps in the trees and houses like spotlights. There was a comforting feeling seeing those long shadowy lines, knowing just around the corner was home and a cool bed with a gentle cool summer evening breeze blowing through the window of my room on the second floor facing the street. I looked forward to the hum of the zicadas and car tires along the dusky roadway. It was a city song that carried me to sleep.

The heathaze of the city is a thing that does not move. You are swimming in the humid air. The pavement is hot under your feet and makes your bike tires sound like they are sizlling, melting even as you rush along with the hot breeze in your face.

Walking down the old train tracks, weed-infested, overgrown things, rusty with years of disuse. Grasshoppers jump and flit across the steel rail path, buzzing their lazy summer day tune. If I continued walking, the midday sun hot at my neck, where would the tracks take me. What adventure would I find?

The day ends and it is like a best friend departing. Though it will be back tomorrow--the sun and its warmth--I feel like I have wasted my time and not spent enough of it with that warm glowing summer partner. Yet its arms reach out to me in one last embrace and that simple act, simple beauty, makes me smile.