Into the Night

I once boarded a train on a night like this – the wind a lion, the air a knife, the new moon a whisper. The train whistle was the song of my wanderlust, the hard push of steel on steel was the sound of a dream of a life that hadn’t happened yet.

Up and into the night, the towns fall away as the cities approach. The Flint Hills slip under the tracks, past Doyle Creek and the screeching crows, past the junk yard where my ’52 Dodge rests with the memory of carrying me from Arkansas to Denver, and finally to the embrace of sweet, sweet Kansas.

The Chicago Amtrak station is in downtown Chicago, just a few blocks from the Art Institute, and there’s six hour layover before the train to New York departs. This is where I saw my first Van Gogh, alive on the wall; my first Matisse, more vibrant than life itself; and my favorite, Pissarro, singing the sensual joy of color, light and the cities of men. There are reasons we call them masters. I search them out whenever I can.

On to the East then, the wind spent, the moon long set, the air metallic and coarse as we smoke in the club car – you could do that back then. We place bets with the porters on how late the train will arrive in Harrisonburg, the winner to take the loot and dash out of the station to procure cheap beer for the last leg into New York. Luckily, I lost.

Penn Station seems so damn far from the world I live in now, but I can still feel every cross-tie between here and there, every sunset, every cigarette, every beer we had to scramble for. My brother still walks those streets, holding my place for the day I return with a knife-edged wind, under a softening new moon, bargaining with the masters to fill the air with color, light and the myriad joys of the cities of man.