Where were you at 7am???

I like feeling alive. I like that ain't nobody up at 6am on a Sunday. I like my two coffees as I catch up on a bike mag. I like locking the front door behind me at 7am and slipping off into what is still the night. I like heading down onto the main street and going the wrong direction, avoiding the broken glass outside the closed and blacked-out pubs. I don't like the discarded chicken-boxes and detritus from the Kebabish strewn at the mouths of lanes and doorways like terrible, random art installations.
I liked the rain this morning. I liked feeling dry apart from a stray dribble of road-water sifting down my chin occasionally. I liked the fantails of water arching up and away from my lights. I liked feeling that someone was trying to get up out of bed to emulate me at that moment but heard the rain and thought wiser of it.
I liked passing a lime-kiln and imagining Noah standing into it's hearth cursing the rivers of God's tears wending manically downhill. I imagined nodding and winking and heading onwards. I liked the sounds of drains and channels choking up with the deluge. I did not like the long puddles before first light for fear I'd forgotten a pot-hole or road-cut that could ambush me. I really liked the pre-dawn gloom forcing itself out through a dismal, foreboding sky that boomed "NOT today!"
I liked meeting not a soul for what felt like an eternity but was really an hour. Then the workers in cars getting back on the treadmill of life spoiled the moment now and then like sharing a cave with fireflies. I liked the silence near Thomastown, the empty fields and run-off that put paid to farm work. I liked seeing the same mare and foal, their backs covered with blue canvas, standing in a gateway, looking bewildered as I passed twice.
I disliked heading south, tired after the hard work, an hour of surviving ahead. But I liked the idea of the kids being up now, wife too, the happiness of disturbia. I liked the Ferry Hill knowing I was back to town, now that the chipper food and glass would be swept up and the café on the corner would be filling.
I liked returning as though I'd gotten away with something. I liked the look of those few people up and about wondering who did I think I was?
I liked unlocking the front door and stepping inside with a story to tell.