Hurtling Through a Night

There is something very soulful, very throw-back, very nostalgic to the whistle and the thunder of a train at night...particularly if it is just far enough away so that you can just barely hear it.  

Just barely allow it to slice into the darkening air...

there are so very few noises anymore that have stayed so constant in the dark...mostly they are from nature; a thunderstorm, cicadas, the howl of a wolf. 

But most other noises have evolved...we don't hear the elevated subways clacking through the city at night, we don't hear the clop of a horse's hooves on brick.  

But the train sounds the same, its soulful wail eerily constant.

As a child I remember hearing the far-away trains bringing cotton to the central valley where my grandparents lived...alone in a bed at night I could hear them calling out...pitch black sky, pitch-perfect horn interrupting the quiet evening.

Occasionally I will step out into my current backyard and I'm able to hear the trains running through Gainesville, long freight trains carrying covered and exposed cargo.  I'm amazed at the clarion call when I hear it...I have to be outside in order to do so, I can't hear it from inside.

It is a saddening sound to me.  A sound like a departure, a sound like a passing through.  It is a sound that is a warning...it is a sound that pushes caution.  It is a sound that must be as loud as possible due to the danger it conveys...due to the destructive nature of it...these steel tons of iron and metal on two cold rails...black and menacing.  The train is a satellite in my evening, passing quickly through, maybe burning hotly but it comes and it passes.  It is a glancing blow to my night, a disruption to my dreams.  It is far too heavy for me to stop, far too powerful for me to do anything but merely step aside as it passes.

But at least I have a warning, at least I have the mournful wail of that impending steel barreling down.

Unlike you...when a thought of you comes hurtling through the night, exploding in my veins and passing through me and disappearing back into the night...with nary a sound, nary a slightly meaningful gesture that could prepare me to do something...warn me to do something…caution me…if even to just step aside as it passes.