On The Train

On The Train

On this morning I rode the train, more conscious this morning than most. Sheaves of sunlight strayed before me, knifing through smeared windows.

I felt a strange comfort afforded me, almost a drug, a cloak of utter awareness.

Outside those windows, winter’s cold shown on frozen faces of the weed filled meadowlands.

Last year’s dead grass went by in blinding waves of browns. The gray sky stood atop the horizon as birds navigated its face, and I could not help wondering why I was here.

Not here now, on the train, amongst the commuters, but here in this world, on this planet.

I looked down and my hands looked not like mine. They seemed of an older vintage, and my eyes looked back at me from the windows as rail trash swirled on an eddy.

People, some standing in crowded aisles, rocked to the rhythm of the steel, unaware of their hypnotic gazes. A sole whimper of someone’s baby broke the clatter of silence, and I remembered being born. It was similar to this, loud but silent all at once, light and dark and cold and warm, rocking and sleepy and new all at once.

Now, my hands seemed my own, and I watched a single particle of dust float as a speck in the sunlight, it drifted and fell to the white hair of a sleeping old man. It rested atop a new vessel inside this traveling train. We all rode together inside with the outside surrounding us, along the rails put there by men one day. We sped toward the city where others like us were, and I wondered why I was born, and what was my purpose.

It had to be more than what it now seemed, or I’d not be confused by my thoughts. Others in other places must be pausing in their places, looking up or down, wondering about the purpose in their shoes.

There are reasons for our here, our questions, our uniqueness. This morning I’m happy to find this on the train, a piece of a question I can tuck away and keep. I welcome the day when all the parts will settle and I’ll be a part of why I’m here.

GJH 09