Suburbia

The pavement stretches out under the early morning light. Water sizzles as it evaporates, shadows creep away. A child's chalk drawing, smudged but understandable, lays imprinted atop it, beside an abandoned ball and rope. Grass pokes up through the cracks, ever resilient, and damp green moss, too. Ants swarm out of their sand pile and across the yard, one by one, a perfect never-ending line.

Slowly the first car roars into action, hesitating before backing down onto the street and taking off. More and more people begin to stir, just like the ants, one by one emerging to check on the flowers or right the garbage cans or retrieve the newspaper, tossed casually into the bushes. Screen doors slam open and shut then open again as children, heavy with books, race after the growling yellow monster.

Soon the street is silent again, cars gone, children gone, cats visiting friends in the street over. Bees start to emerge from the flowering bushes, dreamy and slow, this way and that way, searching for that open window. In the hours alone the blossoms open and the squirrels brave the trellis and the weeds pop right back up.

And then the children return, emerging triumphantly from the belly of the beast, and the cars do too, settling down happily to sleep for the night. Neighbors greet neighbors with friendly eyes and suspicious smiles, kids become warriors and pirates and cavemen in their backyards. A half dozen barbecues fire up, even more frozen dinners are freed from plastic, and radios switch on- here jazz, there a detective program, and down the street, that dreaded rock and roll.

The shadows creep back out and porch lights flicker on, casting a sickly soft orange glow upon the black tar. The fireflies replace the ants, bright as stars come down to earth, and the glass mason jars come out-- this is a take-as-many-prisoners-as-you-can war. Maybe one will shatter and there will be blood and tears and a bandage, but it will be forgotten by the next night.

The sunlight waits just beyond the hills. It will seize its chance to slink back over and usher back in the ants and the monsters and the blossoms. But for now... it is content to wait.