winding down by the water

Today was a good day, satisfying.

Midday we decided to watch the sun come down on the water. In the evening we met up and walked down to the end of the street, across a parking lot, down a string of straight and windy streets until finally we met the shore, the arm. On our way there was a balcony missing a door, and skeletons of red bushes. There was an alcove etched into a sidewalk wall, with thin branches drooping over it.. I thought instantly of a waterfall and desperately wanted to claw my way in and lie vertically against the cement and look at a world full of lines. An industrial-sized pipe was drawn across the valley of the train tracks. They lead to a shipyard by the sea. We stumbled through a muddy forest and zigzagged our way to the edge, flanked by majestic monstrous homes that tried to outdo the view. The glowing sliver of red sun was already swallowed up by the tops of pine trees across the arm. Too late. Dejected we climbed the hill but the water left our eyes, and we quickly turned back towards it, scampering through properties to trace a path through a darkening sky. Stepping out onto the quiet shaley rocks, I could see forever in one direction into endless blue. Elemental feelings I can't express in words. A smattering of rocks are stranded in front of me. Everything is quiet, I keep my eyes and thoughts to myself in the dusky grey. We walk by intermittent docks, stepping carefully along the edge. Two ducks float by politely. I'm faced with a distance. Always something humbling but reasurring about the water. Nothing is passing the time or piercing the silence. It is brisk down here, so we pick ourselves up someone's stairs and walk through a vast immaculate lawn.

There I am, contemplating how blissfully content I become on these adventures, bottled and bundled up in another world, when a train whistle completes the day. It is so close it rattles my bones and fills me with childish glee.. I race up the embankment and watch it clatter by noisily. I tell my companions that when I was young my grandfather drove me out to the train tracks where I would count the endless colourful cars slowly streaming by. The train rambles into the disappearing distance and I forget the long walk home.