Meditations

My day begins before the sun is up as songbirds outside my window announce the coming of another dawn. It ends long after that orb completes its westward journey, hours after the last cardinal has gone to roost for the night.

While he sleeps, I darken my room and wait for another sound, the first, faint mournful whistle of a freight train as it approaches a highway about a mile from where I lay. The sound of its huge diesel engines grows as the train nears and rumbles by, sounding its whistle once again until it becomes a vibration on the rails, leaving me in silence until the next freight rolls by.

This nightly procession repeats itself two, sometimes three, times before my nightly meditations are replaced by dreams. I don't know if its the trains or dreams or my angry bladder than wakens me around 3 AM, but I rise, relieve myself and go back to bed again to meditate while I wait for the final dreams of the night, the ones that come before the sun is up as songbirds outside my window announce the coming of yet another dawn.