On St. Matthew's Hill

It's a thing! It's also short, but not so short as my last offering, so it won't waste much of your time.

The lilacs were already dying, on the day the angels came, though the air was sweet and not yet sodden with humidity. It was late when I left work, the only evidence of the sun the heat radiating off of the asphalt of the basketball court that I customarily cut through to get home.
The court was on the edge of a park, a swatch of green in the midst of the city, a three-block “L” shaped host for pine trees, used condoms, and furtive parties. There had been a school there, in my youth, but decades of mis-governance and “No New Taxes” had left the state in shambles and all that was left was a shell of a building, faded block letters promising a Montessori style education.
To my right, as I left the asphalt, and grass began again to tickle my ankles, rose a hill. It wasn't particularly high, though it loomed large in my childhood mythos. And now, do to too little sleep and too much coffee maybe, ephemeral light played about its crown. In shades of summer they bowed and dipped to unheard music, weaving about each other, sensual.
I was drawn to them, who wouldn't be? But as I stepped to my course, fatigue forgotten, they seemed to fade, diminishing under scrutiny. To my surprise they did not vanish however, rather they drew into themselves, becoming more and more tangible.
By the time the ground beneath my feet began to slope upwards the lights had shrunk to the size of humans, and physical forms began to make themselves manifest, nothing definite yet, but I could make out the curve of a shoulder, or a tossed shock of burgundy hair. Continuing to climb, I could feel the ground shifting beneath my feet, grass becoming slick and glassy, coated in winters frost, and I had to concentrate to keep my footing though I felt no cold.
Beneath me, too, lights began to play, shimmering through cracks in the hoary surface and above me, on the hill, but too far back for me to see, I heard the laughter of children. Indeterminate shapes, impressions of speed, and glee, and rosy cheeks flashed past me, on the edges of reality. Brief glimpses of past lives, nostalgic days, and fleeting memories skated across the skeins of my perceptions, dew sliding down a curved glass, or light refracted through a crystal ball.
And then the snow began falling, silent, soft, and warm, from the clear summers night sky. It collected about my feet, not in drifts, but with the uniformity of purpose popularized by greeting cards, and holiday specials. Before my eyes tracks described themselves, etched by the runners of never-seen sleds and the trudging of those motivated beyond exhaustion with the promise of thrill.
Reaching the crown of St. Matthew's Hill I breached the eye of the nostalgia, and encountered, again, sweet dandelions, proud and butter-yellow in the dim light of summer stars, but looking down around me I found that the storm had spread. Men and women, bundled in the over-large coats of ages past hurried, heads down along the sidewalk, lifting their eyes to cast the occasional smile or warming glance at their fellow sufferers and, doused in snow, the city itself took on a changed aspect.
There was care in the streets, and pride rode the trolley, there was joy in the little sufferings and struggles of the adults on the streets, just as there was in the faces of the children that plunged from nowhere into darkness that seemed to be the echo of daylight, not its inverse. But even as I stood, abashed, in wonderment, they began to fade.
They did so without fear or resentment, just dissolved, back into star dust, or cosmic rays. Flying, fleeting, dancing back, from wherever they had came, a vision of hope from an idealized past and I was left alone on a hill hewn by men in want of somewhere to sled when the snow fell, and a noise blockade between the residential and light business districts, and named for the patron saint of bankers.
I have carried the visions with me, these long years, from the day that the angels came, and from time to time I will think that I see them from afar, dancing to a cosmic reel beyond comprehension. I long to join them, but though I have stood, with the sacred all around me, I have yet to find it in myself.