gasoline colors

A cold spell descends. Even cows look fearful. Watching gasoline colors frozen in puddles, thoughts tumble out, my mind empties. A bird escapes from a bush, a flurry of white, frost departs brittle leaves, sparkling in sunlight. Beautiful. Silent.

This is how I feel today, skin tingles, nerve ends pinch, a bird in flight on a frosty morning.

On fences sit galaxies, ice particles stacked improbably upon one another, a brush of the hand and there’s hundreds more, another and thousands, one more, nothing. I step from road to gravel, there’s no crunch, though I feel edges beneath my sole. The tracks, once gunmetal blue, now turn to rust, though still they lay perfectly parallel, still so exact amongst all this randomness.

Wooden sleepers pass beneath my feet, interspersing gravel, stained all shades of oil-black – sleepers anchored to earth by rusted iron pins, curled over like piglets tails, each seemingly identical, made weary once by giant hammers, swung by calloused hands, long before I was born.

I look up, I see Cally. She signs, “It’s perfect here.”

I reply, “Don’t come here enough, let’s come tomorrow too.”

I see her laugh.

The sky is limitless. Had an artist painted it, you’d have said he lacked imagination – as it is, it’s faultless, not a cloud, not even a plane’s sayonara jet stream, just an alabaster half-crescent moon and immaculate winter sun.

Thoughts slowly tumble back in, one by one, none of them a worry. The day’s serenity is pervasive.

So suddenly I feel a movement, vibrations, through my feet, my legs, quickly up to my neck, so quick. Cally’s waving, frantic, shouting, her mouth twisted - and everything turns to slow motion, just like the bird in the sunlight.

I turn. A train. One meter away. I never knew.