Upon shoreline slumbered clouds too sleepy to make their way into the sky. The tide was their lullaby with its winged karaoke-choir. Squawk. Ah-ah! Ah ah! Squawk! Their never changing sea shanty did ring out. Then, as a timid drummer to this coastal band, came the clickety clack of the Via Rail. It would be several long breaths before its lights could battle the fog, yet wait, wait, wait… With each passing moment timidness gave way to bold strikes and the headlamps pierced the white-out with ease. Today was the day they’d booked it to stop here, at the GPS coordinates for, “Where the heck is that?” It’s a good name for an almost hamlet. Maybe we’ll call it that. And so the behemoth of steel slowed to an easy jog before coming to a stop. "All aboard! All aboard!” the train’s master did shout.
In the spring air my soul did repose as if butterfly-borne, borne by as many as Brighton beach has stones. The city breeze was a briny-bluster, yet the kind that elevates. The traffic lulled and surged as if caught in gentlest lunar-gravity. Then, as a kindling star, newborn in a nebular, a lyric sparked into life, lighting up my chest, lighting up my heart. My soles pounded the concrete pavement, the streets passed in a blur. To the birds that sung upon my route, the ones I noticed not, apologies! Deep apologies! Yet an idea-galaxy does not wait.
Eyes open! Eyes wide! The clock hands leap as gayest spring lambs. The clock hands sun-sing amid this blessed morrow’s tide. Sound and sight marry as one, bolder in each declaration that true day hath begun. So rise up! Come hither! Grab bonnet and cap! Grab parchment and pen! Bring sweet maple sap! The cold night is banished. The long winter battle is won. A dawn of mirth and merriment announces that happiness hath come.
Petals origami-reverse at light's sweetest entreaty. Spring is here! Fresh butterfly wings expand. Spring is here! Aromas are our elevator music, humblest ambient serenade. Spring is here! Birdsong bursts forth as auditory fireworks. Spring is here! Let limbs ba-boom upon the earth and release the heart for dancing capers!
Birthed from the silver flute, musical notes skipped into the universe as flattest stones upon mirrored lake top. Yet its radiating waves neither vanished nor diminished in a two dimensional plane. The waves as a sphere did travel, gaining momentum at ethereal speed, gaining light as a willing partner.
Icy rails whiplashed to the twilight ground, and from them grew shards of ice that sat up as cave-less stalagmites. The heavens lowered, stars erased, so low sat coal-charred clouds. The wind carried not the nightingale, yet a discord of insomniac crows born of vampire’s breath. The trees did crumble to ash, yet no fire did we see. No scent of burning did come. Then to the rails a ghost train was born, not fashioned in the usual way. It was scratch-slashed into the ether with jagged gouges of rough form. Scritch. Scratch. Slice. No Christmas train was this. No carriages of mirth would such a beast ever bring. No! No! This was the nightmare train. This was the rattler that bore dread’s very name.