Rumblethump Night

Velvet scented warm night with the trains rumblethumping at the end of my street: steeling through from the westerly yards to points beyond with their shiny burdens. Clang, bang, rumble, thump, the cars squeal against their tethers, their yearning for speed and distance audible to those awake in the night. The smell of the bitumened ties and friction warmed steel is an incense: the sudden spring heat is redolent with it. A memory of tar shingles and dusty streets unfolds. My open window admits all and sundry: the traffic droning like an aeroplane in the distance, soft lullaby of fretting pistons and exhaust, distant sirens, lost steps on the pavement. This is not the peace of the high, lonely, and lost places of the world, but a kind of peace nonetheless. A sense of things implied from within, without detachment. I am entangled like the freight cars: punched and pulled, banging my way along with my brethren, helplessly enchained. Like them, I shuttle endlessly back and forth: my wake cacophonous. I yearn for speed and distance, though my shackles hold me fast. Outside, the night dreams on despite the occasional awake window glittering it's yellow glow out into the street. Another locomotive strains with it's rat-a-clap-rat-a-clap retinue: a metronomic rhythm counting the hours until dawn. The mechanical tirelessness is a surety: I depend on it. The rumble keeps me in time. I can feel it as it travels through the earth into the heels of my feet where I can grip it. It will never lose me, nor I it.