In the Pale Light of Morning

I.

It was in the hush of early morning, beneath a leaden sky weeping gently upon the earth, that I found myself adrift — one meagre dollar pressed into my palm, and a hollow throb residing where the heart ought to be. My pockets, barren save for the grit of yesterday’s roads, offered no comfort. I was far — achingly far — from that warm hearth we call home, and those dear to me reduced to sad and sorry figures of recollection. I stood amidst the soft, drenched silence, with nowhere to set my course, a solitary figure in the rain. Cold and drunk as I could be.

II.

Beyond the field, out on runway number nine, a great bird of steel — big 707 set to go — prepared for its ascent, indifferent to the man watching from the edge of the grass. I lingered there, sodden and earthbound, my despondency deepening with each moment. The drink, once fire in the blood — how the liquor had seduced the palate when all the women were nimble! — now left only dull embers, and the fast company I once kept had dissipated as vague and muffled figures into a fog of mellifluous obscurity. Then there she went as well: a glinting apparition slipping from view, leaving six white vapour trails across the bleak terrain.

III.

How the engines did thunder! The silver wing on high sliced upward into that vast, impassive firmament. Westward she flew, into an air that from far yon country blows. In about three hours’ time, she would pass high above the shining plain of my childhood, the blue remembered hills, the happy highways where I went and cannot go again. That is the land of lost content. It’s no earthly good to me.

IV.

This place — this forlorn station of departure — oppresses the soul. It was built for men in transit, not we who remain. I linger here, sodden and numbed, the liquor offering only a chill reprieve. A freight train, perhaps, I might have leapt — a gamble for the suitably desperate — but the cold machinery of modern flight allows no such romance. Thus, I must reconcile with my lot. The rain persists, and I must take my leave in this same grey dawn in which I arrived. Ribbon of darkness over me. Hexagram of the heavens. The strings of my guitar.