The south Florida afternoon sun bore down upon us, and it followed us as we made our way across the asphalt of the parking lot. Humid drafts of tropical air steamed off the baking pavement. On waves of convection, they carried the sultry scents and sounds of summer. Pine and citrus and grass. Melting tar. Voices and birds and crickets.

It made me think of other suns. The suns of Rudyard Kipling in Bombay. The blanched whiteness of suns in black and white photographs. Parching tough-guy suns along cowboy trails in Tuscon. Torrid tropical suns in Houston and Galveston and New Orleans. Like Hollywood sets, set in time and illuminated by the feverish flash bulbs of rays long fallen and forgotten.

The same sun that drives the cycle of days, of years, of instance and infinity falls on me now. I squint past the cars and shopping carts. I imagine these rays falling in this same spot when it was filled with Palmetto and scrub, live oak and lizard. And before that, Calusa, in this same oven-like space, sweltering on this same spot, squinting like me, smelling citrus and sweet grass.

It is a feeling of resonance, of self, of existence. Of a moment. A metaphysical realization.

This time, this now, is as temporary and fleeting as the neon green ferris wheel that once stood here, stretching into the Florida night sky, on the gravel and shell; corn dogs and music and summer blue dresses.

I remember other spaces under this same sun, with the bright intensity of that moment in time; ageless in memory - yet somehow sad with the recalling. Squinting across dusty baseball diamonds and smelling the freshly cut outfield grass - times when my boys were mine, fully and deeply, with heart and soul. Sitting in sandboxes and listening to cicadas, surrounded by barbie dolls and summer slip and slides.

A squint, a focus, a memory, a stirring of the soul.

These feverish rays define our days, our seasons, our lives. As I feel them, they remind me of other suns on other days.

#south florida

Time Traveler