This morning when I awoke

This morning I was awakened not by my alarm but by a train whistle. I lay there confused—Why was there a train inside my room?

Where I live in Michigan, in Okemos, right outside of Lansing, I am bounded by train lines. A very active line parallels the library and on the way to work is another line heading to Canada, which Amtrak also uses. Both lines access the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway for shipping. It seemed an unseemly loud train whistle awakening me, pulling me out of sleep.

After being in Chicago for over 35 years, there are times when I wake up and wonder where am I? That hazy middle place between dream and day. I could be anywhere, except in reality. I’ve sometimes been on a bike trip, traveling an open road, or back in my childhood home on Princeton Ave. in Kettering, or in the dining room back in my Chicago community.

In Chicago there were different sounds that accompanied going to bed and waking up. Gunshots, for example. Because I lived between a fire station and a hospital there were always sirens on Wilson Avenue. They were a constant reminder that I lived in a big city, that I lived on the hairpin trigger of danger.

Waking to a train whistle is a new experience, one not entirely unwelcome. I have a sense of going places, traveling along with the bumpety-bump of the wheels on the tracks, waiting to arrive.

            As I climb out of bed to soapy grey skies.