I heard the song of a train this morning...

In the spring we sleep with the french door in our bedroom open.

The sounds of children playing in the neighborhood often lull me to sleep at night.

The sound of doves and the fresh scent of the breeze often awaken me in the morning.

I lie quietly (yes, I am actually quiet sometimes) and watch the morning awaken.

The light changes from a hint of the day to come, to that soft diffused early morning tenderness possible only during a morning in Spring.

The air smells alive and green and full of blossoms and promise.

And the clear, mournful song of the train horn takes me to verdant places where train tracks cross the distance of miles and memory. I am transported to places where white farmhouses stand sturdily, adorned and awash with only the slight pink light of the spring sunrise for a few moments each morning.

I travel by fields where some might view the broken down fences as abandoned dreams and some might view the overgrown weeds as hopeful possibilities.

My journey continues through small towns where vignettes of women in bathrobes stand in the warm golden light of their kitchen windows to fill battered coffee pots with cold, pure, tap water.

I return to those moments when I held the warmth and weight of small children, damp from their bath, smelling of sweetness and innocence on my lap.

I can feel the textured and slightly battered "Child's Garden of Verses Book" under my fingertips...the edge of the book rough and worn away with nightly readings of a quickly passing childhood.

Robert Louis Stevenson captures their imagination and their drowsy eyes grow wide as I recite these words...

"Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle
All through the meadows the horses and cattle."

They snuggle deeper in my lap...

"All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by.
Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And here is the green for stringing the daisies."

Little heads grow heavy and lay upon my shoulder...

"Here is a cart runaway in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill, and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone forever!"

Oh, I heard the song of a train this morning.

And it was a lovely, poignant refrain.

Mr. Jenny says somedays we hear the train horn more clearly then others because there is more humidity in the air.

I think that somedays we hear it more clearly then others because we need to remember where we come from...

...so we can clearly see where we are going as we continue on this epic journey of our lives.