It's Still Life

a journal

27 July — Somewhere Between Tunnels and Bells

05: something
Woke before the alarm.
Some nib in my sleeping mind
was writing thank-you notes:
You fill my heart, thank you.
You are my heat, thank you.

Then the alarm rang —
a clumsy editor.

If I weren’t driving to France,
I might’ve stayed in bed,
writing gratitude like love letters to ghosts.

07:28
“Arriving Channel Tunnel in 56 minutes,”
the satnav said.

Outpost Drive by Envious Heart was playing —
“…don’t know where we’re going…”
and I laughed.

The car did not.

09:46
“Two,” I say
to the unsmiling French customs officer.
“Here — use this passport.
It’s less antagonistic.”

11:52
The Eurotunnel train moves
through the seabed at 186 kilometres per hour.
Not that you’d notice —
there’s no ceremony to it.
Just a voice:

Welcome to France.
Please drive on the right.

12:50
Ninety minutes from Reims.
It’s raining.
The wipers thump like a heartbeat.

Davy Knowles plays.
“…sometimes I wish
we could listen to the news on mute,”
I say.

No one disagrees.

15:58
Arrived in Reims.
Hotel: checked in.
French doors opened to cathedral bells —
soft iron,
calling across centuries.

16:05
A walk through old streets,
still wet with rain.

A drink at Hemingway’s Bar.
Je pense que oui.

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Postscript
Not every journey announces itself. Sometimes it hums under your hands, between the thank-you and the toll gate, where silence nods and bells remember you.

Imagery and poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2025.

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