“If you can find it you can eat it,” said Bruce, dragging light body armour over his cotton onesie. “Make yourself at home. Order in what you want, so long as it’s not from FiveStarRipOff.com. I’m on night duty, see you at sunrise.” Then, with an aching sigh, he reached for the door handle and was gone. Heroes are that way I guess, there one moment and gone the next. Duty calls and that’s it.
My soul rides aboard a paper parasol, eyes wide to the dreaming land. Every vivid hue is where pastel meets neon haze. Into the air I whoop, my lungs singing in anti-thunder boom. Then from my brain comes bubbles of happy rainbow swirl, each of them a snow globe that is to winter quite unknown.
The rain came as an unfathomable number of dreams: dreams that quenched every plant and tree, dreams that fed the rivers and lakes, dreams that washed every home and roadway clean. These millions of dreams chattered on the tin roof tops and cars. So we sat there, Walter and I, with happy lungs of storm-soaked air. And then, right then, we saw it. How could such a thing exist? From nowhere blushed a rainbow woven of cascading strands.
In that maple dawn, upon a yawn of prairies, the train arced into a visual grin. Gentle clicking as percussion, huckleberry fuelled chickadees as choir, it sang each yard as loudly as a sonnet’s mile. Through wide prairies and mountain passes same, it took the grandest of landscapes, in easy stride. Uphill or down, easy plains or rocky screes, wheels turned. Its chassis, water freckled during the starlit hours, soon dried to a glossy sheen. The engine master smiled, sipping coffee, eyes a dreamy gaze, for if the tracks were his nation's arteries, surely he had become its pulse.
'Twas balmy weather on the fool's gold path, the track that fashioned foes of friends. Though storms upon it lost their identity, how they did rage on all the same. "Twas a tyranny of the heart, dear lassie, that way that was no way at all. "Twas an extinguishing of the soul's hearth, dear laddie, and upon it none can rekindle the flame. Harken to this warning. Let it not meet a single sole. Upon it darkness is ever clothed in white, fur trimmed, eyes bright - demons as angels will come in twisted song. Day to night. Right to wrong. Dark to pseudo light. So traveller beware. Beware! For the bewitching hour hath begun!
Here they come, the sweet babies of recent years. Here they come, those without the manners of their elders or affluent peers. Here they come, the future of nations breath, our greatest treasure, our hearts. Here they come, the fodder for the machine. Here they come. Here they come. Here they come. Why so glum? Why not be more chipper when the morning comes? Hey ho! Hey ho! Put on your work boots! Put on your gloves! In this great system, in our grand plan, why on Earth would you be so confused?