The tranquil sights, sounds as seasons change

I know the columns that I write at night.

I can look through columns that are years old and pick out almost every one I've written sitting in a pool of lamplight, the computer blue-white, the light outside fading.

This is one of those.

Written when the day has caught up with me, when time has run out, when deadlines loom.

In the night columns, things get singular. What I mean by that is that the complexities of the world get winnowed out by the isolating light of the street lights. Houses along both sides of the street step backwards and vanish, closed up except for the bright of their windows, and what's left outside is a little like a stage play.

Characters swim into and out of the pools below the lights. Actors take their bows. Significance gets packed tight into what would otherwise be the absolutely ordinary.

Wednesday was the first of the soft nights: I remember them from last summer. It was the first night when it really stayed warm in the dark, the cloud cover holding the heat in. When it was possible to sit in front of the house in shirt sleeves, to watch random bicycles whisper on their quietly hissing tires, their riders making determined straight lines to somewhere.

The big trees are just breaking out of bud, dropping brown hard budshells that look for all the world like small insect carapaces. The wind has flattened, and fugitive sounds ring out for blocks.

Cars at the stop signs peel out unintentionally loud and fast on the leftover sand from winter; the streetsweepers come on Thursday. The sweepers will beetle around for hours, working the curbs and winding in circles in the intersections. The warning signs are already out. No overnight parking.

I've given myself a new deadline of midnight, one small perk of being in charge.

I wonder, sometimes, if this period of observation could pass for meditation.

Big-engined cars are teasing the police on the thoroughfares: motorcycles are bellowing from the bottom of their exhaust-pipe registers like they are clearing their throats.

Occasional cars, packed full of music, diligently display the Doppler effect. Someone downstreet presses their key fob, and yellow hazard lights blink one-two, unfamiliar and unrecognized semaphore. (I believe, the letter “I”.)

The summer smells aren't here yet. No loam or leaves, no richness of cedar. A hint of woodsmoke, a fugitive hint of cigarette on the wind, a flickering suggestion of weed smoke, but mostly neutral.

The cat is in the backyard on alert. Grass is greening.

Two teens scoot by, one on a skateboard, standing still, the other, running, and it seems incongruous that they are moving at the same speed. The skateboard wheels are loud on the grit.

Ridiculously large hares lope around the boulevard, still wearing partial winter colours, but believing themselves to be perfectly invisible. One sits stock-still in the street, lit bright by headlights from a stopped car, and for a moment, there's a standoff.

Five-pound rabbit, thousand-pound SUV.

It's a wonder I don't see more dead hares.

Down near the river, the fire trucks are rolling out of their station, their sirens regular sentences, the air horns abrupt punctuation.

Robins discuss the calculus of worms in liquid conversation.

A man in a hat and I make side-eye conversation, neither of us directly acknowledging the other.

I try out spoken sentences to the empty street. It has no opinion on which ones sound better.

A voice that could be next to me or a block away says a forceful “Hey.”

But nothing comes of it.

The light of the sky is now deep blue, the windows of the houses warm yellow. The surface of the street has begun to glow a soft orange-yellow, reflecting the overhead lights. This is tranquility.

A man sneezes three times, loudly, then a long pause and sneezes once more.

The back windows of the parked cars are cloaked and layered with dust. A short shower of rain would be nice, for many reasons. I wouldn't mind hearing the awkward swallowing sound of the drainpipe as I fall asleep.

Hello, abruptly close to summer.

I think we've all been waiting.