Can you not hear the summer days as they gather to make the "As One" that roars in the distance? It is a sound that exists, all on its own, and were all the mechanisms of our modern-day lives to shut down at once, I suspect it would still be there.  

It is the underlying drone that accompanies the warmth of the season as it lays claim, sets down tracks in the forest, small towns and the grand cities of our land.  

Some folks try to pin that sound on something having to do with hydro wires. Some, a little farther gone than I, think it can read your thoughts and sell them to your enemies.  

The time you sense it most is after the lights have begun to go down. It's when you're up, having that last cigarette, justifying the day you've put behind, juggling the events of the one to come and rationalizing your presence in what is The Moment.

I've thought of it often, that hum of summer. I've tried to capture same and have even chanced losing credence with others by speaking of it aloud.  

There are some who wholly agree: I've heard it too, they say, and like me, have wondered if there is a way to put words to the feeling--words that may do it justice.  

Some listen, when I speak of it; they walk away, hoping no one they know might have been lurking nearby. They are mortified to think that someone may have caught them engaging in idle chatter with the Village Idiot.  

Some express their astonishment that I would even mention it; they are the ones who truly believe. It is just that they've never heard of anyone else taking enough notice to comment upon it. They are the ones who have lived with it all their lives and take its existence for granted.  

They accept it as being nothing more remarkable than the French directions on the backs of soup cans. Its existence is something they'd not think to question.  

It is the Spirit of Summer, the same host that's held it together since the keeping of time was invented. It is the spirit that has always arrived with the wonderful scents of April and May, the balmy nights of June, and the discovery of chalk-drawings on city sidewalks.  

It will be with us, this spirit, through the weeks to come and will hover, weakening only when the leaves begin to rust and a new host meanders into our midst. All of that will be when the Lady Moon begins to hear her daughters calling her by the name of Harvest and people who sit by their windows late at night are inclined to close the shutters and forget about ordering another case of popsicles.  

Hail to you, Spirit of Summer! Long May You Hum!

Author's Biography

I am a writer living in the west end of Toronto, Canada. My short pieces and poems have appeared in small publications around Toronto. Four large newspapers have published my opinion letters, posted them up as articles--not just letters to the editor.

You can see my work on Twelfth Planet, The Pedestal Magazine (where I also work as a forum moderator), Wild City Times (which I publish), Mocha Memoirs. Besides prose and poetry, I'm very good at constructing crossword puzzles.

E-mail Carly at wildcity@vif.com  

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