A Night Walk
The trees halo themselves around streetlights, bare branches flaming bronchioles breathing in the chilled spring air. The sun has dried the streets, left ice only on the side roads as thick as a forearm. The dirt in the road with its wetness frozen in, dark. The city sounding like a paved back road whenever a wheel moves over its streets. Walking in gum boots and my Grad hoodie, toque and gloves on, moving through the clouds of my breath in the crisp and dense blackness of the night. In the shadow the height of the boot makes my legs look thinner.
I walk towards the water, the emptiness between the street light ahead of me and those across the bay. Tonight it looks like it could be outer space. I worry that the cars coming from behind won't see me until I remember the white names of my graduating class on the back. I take off my gloves so they can see the whites of my palms swinging at my sides. I imagine my palms, ghostly, in the headlights, disembodied and pallid.
The snow bank spines itself, brown, above the side walk so I scale it and am walking two feet above street level. The sun has crusted everything into a hardness. The light plays off the white snow and it looks like incandescent styrofoam. I turn towards the old train, the Newfie Bullet. In the summer the train is a museum for tourists, the last relic of the Newfoundland Railway. I move toward the bright orange snow plough; the metal curves into a smile as it sharpens itself in the front. The wedge of the thing use to part snow drifts along the Gaff Topsails, in the wreckhouse. I imagine it carving through space, see the wind curling around it. The windows atop it make it a face, two glass panes eyeing out out the line of the track. Move to the container behind and it's filled with railway ties, the scent of tar still in them, waiting to be freed by summer heat.
The passenger car's windows are all frosted over along the edges. Inside the silhouettes of leather seats line the windows, looking in the blackness like heads bent in prayer. Silent. Ahead of the passenger car is the dinning car. The windows are clearer and I can make out the places still set perfectly, small faux roses in small vases on each table. the white table cloths are crisp, the plates set. the silver cutlery catches the moonlight streaming in through the windows and gleams onto the glasses. The glasses small. immaculately clean; I imagine them being filled with water or red wine, being held by their slender throats. I press my hand to the glass and it is cold. I move ahead to the sleeping car where one of the rooms has its door open. Inside I can see a cabinet on the floor, everything painted white.
The train's sleek black body stretches out ahead of me, a hard shadow on the snow. The cars snake away towards the iced parking lot and the two cars there. I climb the steps to stand on the caboose and imagine my grandfather and his hands holding the steel. His palms hard from work and fishing lines. I imagine the young hands of my father and wonder how much I may resemble them standing here. I see the train stopping on the Gaff Topsails and them hopping from the back, walking into the wilderness and their cabin. I see the train moving until there is no more track left, only the gravel scar of it on the cheek of the island. The train here now in Corner Brook, its history self-contained, immobile and useless as an old weapon.
I walk towards the water, the emptiness between the street light ahead of me and those across the bay. Tonight it looks like it could be outer space. I worry that the cars coming from behind won't see me until I remember the white names of my graduating class on the back. I take off my gloves so they can see the whites of my palms swinging at my sides. I imagine my palms, ghostly, in the headlights, disembodied and pallid.
The snow bank spines itself, brown, above the side walk so I scale it and am walking two feet above street level. The sun has crusted everything into a hardness. The light plays off the white snow and it looks like incandescent styrofoam. I turn towards the old train, the Newfie Bullet. In the summer the train is a museum for tourists, the last relic of the Newfoundland Railway. I move toward the bright orange snow plough; the metal curves into a smile as it sharpens itself in the front. The wedge of the thing use to part snow drifts along the Gaff Topsails, in the wreckhouse. I imagine it carving through space, see the wind curling around it. The windows atop it make it a face, two glass panes eyeing out out the line of the track. Move to the container behind and it's filled with railway ties, the scent of tar still in them, waiting to be freed by summer heat.
The passenger car's windows are all frosted over along the edges. Inside the silhouettes of leather seats line the windows, looking in the blackness like heads bent in prayer. Silent. Ahead of the passenger car is the dinning car. The windows are clearer and I can make out the places still set perfectly, small faux roses in small vases on each table. the white table cloths are crisp, the plates set. the silver cutlery catches the moonlight streaming in through the windows and gleams onto the glasses. The glasses small. immaculately clean; I imagine them being filled with water or red wine, being held by their slender throats. I press my hand to the glass and it is cold. I move ahead to the sleeping car where one of the rooms has its door open. Inside I can see a cabinet on the floor, everything painted white.
The train's sleek black body stretches out ahead of me, a hard shadow on the snow. The cars snake away towards the iced parking lot and the two cars there. I climb the steps to stand on the caboose and imagine my grandfather and his hands holding the steel. His palms hard from work and fishing lines. I imagine the young hands of my father and wonder how much I may resemble them standing here. I see the train stopping on the Gaff Topsails and them hopping from the back, walking into the wilderness and their cabin. I see the train moving until there is no more track left, only the gravel scar of it on the cheek of the island. The train here now in Corner Brook, its history self-contained, immobile and useless as an old weapon.