Puzzled

When I was a child, I lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere...well, actually it was in the middle of a tiny rural community in the Murray Mallee district of Southern Australia.

Our farm could be found along a highway bound for Sydney. Neighbours were generally a drive away, so the sounds of the day were largely our own, and reasonably predictable.

In those days I guess I was an early riser, because I remember the sun rising in the morning, casting a glow across the land, and warming the night cooled sand beneath my bare feet.

The puzzling thing about this scene was a particular sound I would hear during the summer months at that time of day - sunrise. I later came to learn that this sound was in fact a freight train, snaking its way through the tiny township that sprawled in sporadic clusters just beyond the golden dunes and cereal crops, but at the time, I had concluded that the distant chugging of the steam train, was in fact the sound the sun made, when whomever it was, hoisted that tired and sleepy yellow orb begrudgingly into the darken sky, to light and herald in the new day.

To me, the "whats" of that sound were a no-brainer, since it seemed to occur around the same time of each day; just as the sun peaked over the dunes. Unfortunately my bubble burst on the whole idea, when I asked my Mum how the sun made that sound, to which she narrowed her confused eyes at me and told me it was the train. I argued with her about it, but alas, her argument seemed....mmm, saner.

Since that time, I have been searching for a reasonable description of the sound the sun makes when it rises, and I guess I would have to say that is warbles like a magpie, crows like a rooster, screeches like a parrot, laughs like a kookaburra, twitters like an orchestra of tiny birds, honks like the Canadian geese, thuds like the morning newspaper on my doorstep, sopranos like the creaky gate next to my house and rustles like drowsy children wrestling with the bed sheets.
I love it.