another walk home

Work kept me out late. I don't usually walk home this late. Yet it was one of the better experiences I've had as of recent. It had rained earlier but the sky was now clear with spots of clouds. The moon and stars shown bright, reflecting off the silent streets. A car passed occasionally, but it was mostly quiet. Now even when it's late, it's rarely quiet, but tonight was an exception. It was past the time when the trolley track ran, which meant an ear-piercing silence that made me smile. The air was clear with hints of fireplace smoke. The slight breeze was crisp and cut easily through my fleece. The trees moved playfully with the wind; and I could hear everything because there was nothing. The silence would be interrupted rarely by an obnoxious sanitary truck or the audible beeping of a delivery truck in reverse; but I kept looking at the sky and the empty streets resting beneath it. The setting was like a dream, everything slightly comfortable and yet still unknowable. The city slept as I watched and it made me happy to know that I was experiencing something most people missed out on. I sat on the steps of my apartment building and breathed deeply; and I could hear it all!

Now I'm listening to Bob Dylan's "Boots of Spanish Leather," and the lyrics only punctuate the scenes I had just experienced. The words comforted the sleeping and I comforted the words and the words comforted me.