Completely in the Dark

After the day exhales, it gulps down the ripe fruit that is nighttime.

During the spring of 1976, it never felt stronger given my March suspension from school for smoking pot, after-school Drug Relate meetings with my fellow troublemakers, the new busboy gig at the Lafayette Club one or two nights a week, and definitely on the weekends.

As kids, we stayed out late, often past ten. When the parents wanted us home, they rang a bell Dad had installed just outside the front lakeside door.

“Michael! Brian! Home, boys!”

The neighborhood dogs barked in reply; we were blocks away playing Kick the Can in another kid’s yard. When night blossomed, the air turned sweeter. And as it breathed in on itself, the stars twinkled like the cymbals in that song where the orchestra quiets and a flute holds a lone note in the air, and a harp shivers…