Cicadas and Stars

August nights are made of nostalgia. The crickets and cicadas sing the same songs I remember from my childhood and the lightening bugs (that's what we called them) dance and flicker to the music.
I am lying on my back in the backyard. Dusk has made way for dark and the heat of the day bows to breezes coming from the Sound, a few miles away.

The grass is wet from the sprinkler, but I don't mind. My hair is wet anyway from the shower and my pajamas will dry before bedtime. Stars are beginning to appear, and I can name a whole bunch of them. Like the cicada song, the stars have also been my companions through all my years.

Who made the summer night? Why does it seem so full of magic? I stay still while the world slowly transforms from one thing to another. Is God part of this? "There was evening and there was morning . . ." -- that's what the Bible says over and over, seven times. Did Abel and Cain play outside after dinner?

I relive in my mind those nights of stars, of the ice cream man ringing up the street, the whistle for dogs to come home and children to be in bed.