Summer is born in fire

This is fireworks in my neck of the woods.

Summer is here. The kids are out of school. The sun is yellow and melted in the sky and the air shimmers and wavers. I try to light the barbecue (repeatedly) and my two-year-old says "Daddy, why do you push the button?"

The grass is drying. Thunderstorms whirl by in bruised blues, skimming the lakes to the north and the south, carried on hot winds that touch us only briefly before the air dies, growing hot and solemn in the afternoons. We lie in a strip of deep sunlight, where the sky above is still blue. You can smell woodsmoke on the air; it carries, crossing from farm to farm, house to house, lingering in each breath, each new memory. We have picnics on the lawn, in the shade of the old maple. The willow hangs down its hairy arms. The olive tree rustles silver-green in the occasional breeze. 

The sparklers snap and crackle. There is the distant pop of firecrackers. The sound carries, fading into the distant thunder, the echoes tangling in the churning sky.

Soon the fireflies will light out in the evening, smaller and grander than any fireworks.

Summer is here.

Happy Canada Day. Happy Fourth of July.