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 Energy!
Vital! A Purpose! Icy winds gust along the platform. The train pulls in.
Whoosh! Inside. Quick! Pull the windows down — clip, clack, crash, move,
and repeat, repeat. Close the carriage against the biting gusts of wind
ripping into the metal and wood rattling the ancient carriage and glass.
The carriage is nearly empty, in forlorn half-light, and the wind gusts
through the passages of the stationary train.
Soon — it
is warm, the doors and windows shut: a creak and grind and the train
chugs off to the place where I will get off. The lights of the outer
city are intermittent — flashing by as echoes of reality. Detached from
me inside the carriage.
Too soon
the creak of slow braking and the station’s here. The carriage stops
abruptly as I rise and brace myself for the stop. Outside — the wind is
howling now, gusts of currents seeming to rip at my clothes in a frenzy
of finding somewhere to land. The street light is yellow — odd against
the black sky as I see the patterns the wind is making, creating, as
dust flies past the lamp post, into, then out of, the light, flying to
the heavens, as if home were there tonight.
I shiver,
clutch my clothes against me. The dust flies. Looking up, the paddock
across the way seems to have mist over it — yet the wind denies that
thought quickly as the storm increases. The mist is dust, rising from
the earth as a sheath of the earth’s cover splits. Plastic bunting from
the car yard picks up the crescendo of the storm and I close my eyes
down against the dust and run faster as the heavens seem to fly. No
rain, Just dust. Today’s dropped garbage zings along the gutter as the
world hides inside away from the storm.
It feels
exhilarating — free — my hair flies around me — then the parked truck
protects me. I look up and see the heavens fly in particles of dust too
small for the eye to contour — yet it is there — all round me — even in
my breath. Yet, it’s free and so am I. Feet lift under me as I race the
wind to the car, head down, heart out. Life! Begin? I am in!
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