Someone taught me an interesting fact about train horns yesterday.
I wrote this one night a few weeks ago, and thought I might post it, in large part because of the title of this entry.
The clock strikes two, and the fire burns softly beneath the mantelpiece. A single flame smolders lazily as the scorched wood crackles around it. The embers glow, the flame trembles, and all else is dim and quiet.
I am alone in the light of the dying fire, and the world is asleep. I breathe in the faint smell of burning wood and the stillness of the night. Amidst the silent world, a train roars dully along the tracks down by the baseball field, off in the distance. Through trees, and houses, past roads, and fences, beyond ditches and fields, it sounds once, twice, its mournful call tolling out the emptiness of the late watches of the night.
It always makes me sad, that sound. The clickety-clack along the iron tracks bleeds together in the distance to fill the air with a quiet roar which somehow seems only to make the darkness feel even more deserted.
Always the same, that noise, calling out its presence, a warning of danger for those who venture too close. But there is no one. The tracks are empty, and the train bellows out “Caution!” to phantoms who are not there to hear. And so its cry goes out across the night, searching for any ear to bend to its melancholy. But most are already asleep, tucked safely away in their beds, and they do not hear. Those who are yet awake, gathered still in revelry, do not listen. No, it is only those who remain still awake and still alone who hear its far-off call in the deep depths of the vacant night, uniquely tuned to the frequency of the lonely soul.
It calls out, beckoning in a stony, stoic chorus, like the ghost which wails for pity of its plight. It sounds its siren song and its tendrils spread out through the dark, seeping in through open windows and thin walls. For those who hear it, the sound demands obedience.
For just a few moments we hear its sorrow and through our thoughts we are connected to it. Perhaps we imagine its driver, bleary-eyed and tired. Do we think on its journey, from whence and where it goes? Or maybe we imagine its endless toil, the grinding, shifting, churning locomotive's locomotion. But not for long. It is bound to press ever forward, ever onward into the black. Soon it has passed, and with it its power; its sound retreats into the night, and it can trouble us no more. Perhaps the thought and its thinker linger here and there. But not for long. And so the train travels on, forever pining. But wherever it goes it is soon gone, leaving behind only a thought or two and a night which now seems all the emptier for its passing.
The clock strikes two, and the fire burns softly beneath the mantelpiece. A single flame smolders lazily as the scorched wood crackles around it. The embers glow, the flame trembles, and all else is dim and quiet.
I am alone in the light of the dying fire, and the world is asleep. I breathe in the faint smell of burning wood and the stillness of the night. Amidst the silent world, a train roars dully along the tracks down by the baseball field, off in the distance. Through trees, and houses, past roads, and fences, beyond ditches and fields, it sounds once, twice, its mournful call tolling out the emptiness of the late watches of the night.
It always makes me sad, that sound. The clickety-clack along the iron tracks bleeds together in the distance to fill the air with a quiet roar which somehow seems only to make the darkness feel even more deserted.
Always the same, that noise, calling out its presence, a warning of danger for those who venture too close. But there is no one. The tracks are empty, and the train bellows out “Caution!” to phantoms who are not there to hear. And so its cry goes out across the night, searching for any ear to bend to its melancholy. But most are already asleep, tucked safely away in their beds, and they do not hear. Those who are yet awake, gathered still in revelry, do not listen. No, it is only those who remain still awake and still alone who hear its far-off call in the deep depths of the vacant night, uniquely tuned to the frequency of the lonely soul.
It calls out, beckoning in a stony, stoic chorus, like the ghost which wails for pity of its plight. It sounds its siren song and its tendrils spread out through the dark, seeping in through open windows and thin walls. For those who hear it, the sound demands obedience.
For just a few moments we hear its sorrow and through our thoughts we are connected to it. Perhaps we imagine its driver, bleary-eyed and tired. Do we think on its journey, from whence and where it goes? Or maybe we imagine its endless toil, the grinding, shifting, churning locomotive's locomotion. But not for long. It is bound to press ever forward, ever onward into the black. Soon it has passed, and with it its power; its sound retreats into the night, and it can trouble us no more. Perhaps the thought and its thinker linger here and there. But not for long. And so the train travels on, forever pining. But wherever it goes it is soon gone, leaving behind only a thought or two and a night which now seems all the emptier for its passing.