Magic Hour

It was that magic hour of late summer evening twilight.
The bus home from work had deposited me along the waterfront.
People were running, pushing baby strollers, lovers were sitting on blankets,
but life gave me that momentary gift of not hearing any of it, of not being a part of it, of just seeing it,
watching it like an old flickering movie frame.
I started up Depot street, an old steep hill that veers from the waterfront towards home.
The old tarmac was cracked from roots trying to reclaim their earth.
The sun glittered in through the screen of heavy summer leaves.
Green leaves became gold lined, the sun exposing their lattice lives, speaking to the life running through their veins.
A steep rocky path winked at me from behind a laden fringe of branches.
The shelter under the trees beckoned of the kings and queens we would become of unclaimed territories in childhood summers.
A land in which Queen Anne's Lace was royal, earth was magic, and sticks called new worlds into being.
And that one magic hour reclaimed a whole decidedly non-magical day.