There isn’t any shame in the suburbs, unless you are ashamed. I grew up here and had no intention of returning. But, I have returned and if my little boy could speak he would have said, ‘Don’t go, Dad. Not today.’

Still, I am in the mostly dark. Before the train. Before the iridescent lights and newspaper rustles of the businessmen who live further out than they would like and rub their eyes as they stub out their cigarettes on the station asphalt.

Before this train the sky is laughing at my shame. I can be as beautiful as the sea change you are after. I can take these quarter acre blocks and turn them into a movie scene. I can hear the wind whip up and whisper as I take the digital camera that belongs to my employer and start taking some shots. How many can I fit in before the train?

She is warm and she would love this sky. I will send it to her, before she wakes up, to feed the little man and spend the day trying to work out how it was she got here. A whole new side of the river to explore and a whole new life for which she is responsible. They never covered this in the university degree. Let alone the university of life. Two-dollar shots with beer chasers before the article was due at nine the next morning didn’t help with this new type of sleep deprivation – and think the drugs will kill you.

This sunrise is for shepards and sailors who will give warning because it is another day and who knows what is in store.

The train brakes screech as if warning the businessmen and me that there are better things at home, in bed. My fingers are numb and my hair uncombed. The trees are black against the sky and fatherhood has helped me to get a job, to get up early and see sunrises in the suburbs that put sunsets over the ocean to shame.

These are colours. These are things worth living for. A wife and a kid in the outer suburbs of an average city in a world that is trying to work out whether these sunrises are worth saving.

Pink sky at night, sailors delight. Pink sky in morning, sailors give warning.

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