I have studied the skies

I have studied the skies, flown through trains watching them pass me by, and I them.

Absorbed.

The fading splendour, the colours giving life to that which lays beneath.

Pink bails of hey picked out by nights approaching sway.

I have swayed on the train, succumbed to its soft jog, flown with it through the flow, through the rock, through the stone of love and scent and sound.

The gentle squeal of the tracks on wheels as they meet for a moment too long, the beeps of the doors as the lights go on.

The sounds of ‘alert’ and ‘welcome’ so unwelcoming and nondescript.

The burgeoning plants bursting out into spaces filled repeatedly, just for moments, as the days go by, until night,

when they stop.

Bar perhaps the passing of a maintenance carriage.

But night, night-space is owned by nature, by the animals the foxes, badgers and plants that reside. Waiting to be seen tomorrow when the commuters flash by.

Each longing for space, so abundant outside the window,

beautiful greens and blues, looking at the land we live on.

Approaching the passing day that cannot be spent on this train.

I, long for the train for the space in my mind it allows, for the knowing that this moment is active and I can rest, can find my thoughts, allow them to bubble and float away. I can let my eyes rest on trees and leaves and sweeping fields that pass in seconds and stroke the surface of my soul.

On the carriages that we draw adjacent to in platforms, carriages with the list of their stations emblazoned on their side, an advert for their destinations as we await the space that they fill.

Too much it is, knowing that someone else is headed in the exact opposite direction.

but the faces as they move by depict the same as my own.

Where do you walk along that platform, to where do you go? Are you headed home, are you always home?

I see the lights through the trees falsely flickering, with my movement, not theirs. I hears sounds, a persistent clicker, a plastic table come loose taps against it’s apparent support.

the sights of the middle-aged teenagers texting one another, sighing, wheezing as they explain to each other how ‘messaging’ works.

Back from holidays they sit,

separate,

each family member guarding a seated bag.

On an empty Sunday evening train.

The emboldening roar of the space occupied by our train displacing air through the tunnel, the hiss of the brakes as we go, all the sounds, the symphony of the train. I sit looking out the window.

One of my favourite activities, looking.

Drinking with my eyes,

I am a drunk to vision.

It never hits the sides I feel it. I feel it, I devour it.

It is my vice of choice.

Just as sound is my darkest lover, embracing me with a hold that leaves no room for any other sense, where all thought is consumed.

The magic of a melodic spell always engulfs me and I know too well that I am its slave, its eager student, its addict. I cannot go there on unforeseen terms.

But vision, vision washes over my limbs and heart, through my eyes, sates me, refreshes, eases and opens my mind for more and more beauty. And space.

This. This must be shared.

I feel.

I feel in practice, in meditation. I open this link and my feelings are all that I have.

All in the fullest sense.

The sense of full-ness.

All as in everything.

What more could there be?

To me, a number of experiences flowing through this body,

a countless range and wave of existence, a love. A simple complexity.

A simple complexity.

A connection.

Through my eyes, through my heart.

Less me. I feel. I am a vessel of an image. An imaginer.

The trees hurtle by up close, now too dark to make out against the blue light of the skies behind.

They trick my eyes, rods and cones dance between their roles, drawing me to an illusional reality.

The colours have their moment now in this journey.

Pre-dusk emboldened to their brightest, most vibrant saturated selves.

Do they look like this all the time somewhere?

Somewhere, that we go.