When the streetlights came on

I remember sitting in our front yard on those aluminum framed lawn-chairs that my dad must have re-webbed a hundred exaggerated times. Many summer evenings just before the lightning bugs, we'd be watching for that instant when the streetlights came alive in the other neighborhood, 'over-there'. They didn't use photo-sensors then, so a whole array would come on instantaneously; although we liked to think we could see some sort of moving progression as each incandescent street lamp lit.

 I miss how it smelled in our front yard. I miss those rickety chairs and seeing my mom and dad sitting in them.


And still, the safest thing that I know is the feeling I get when I hear the cicadas, crickets and night bugs.