It is amazing the way the mind wanders when
we are in traffic. We sit in a clutter
of tempered stillness waiting for permission
to go at the flash of a green light. There is so
much observance we capture with our sight
when we try to peek sideways at strangers
who are intensely gripping their steering wheels
impatiently ready to drive off to another location
for the next pause in time. There are stories
in their eyes. Each motorist has either a chapter
to continue or a chapter to begin in life’s novel
of inevitability. On summer days, in particular,
we seem more restless; there’s an urgency
to get to the next familiar place. There is history
in our faces as smiles turn into mood swings releasing
a road rage that surfaces from the inside like a battle
between Jekyll & Hyde. The beeping of horns
gossip in an obscenity of noise as a rude July heat
agitates the frustrated and annoys the patient
in humanity’s hustle to be somewhere else
within the destination of time. For one minute,
in the collapse of traffic, we become a collision
of motion, soon forgotten, until the next escape.
© 2012
Tarringo T. Vaughan
