Daily Commute
by beighartman
The dawn defibrillator sends shockwaves to senses.
Inhale.
This city’s heartbeat wakes, resumes rhythm.
Eighteen and a half miles, the morning blood rushes in filling arteries and streets.
Same as every day.
Mundane miracles.
And still—
swooping beyond exit bends through threshold: arriving
to tree-populated panorama; Terabithian splendor.
Boughs and extensions slathered in forest fire fog—
heaven and earth make love. Skyless.
Thomas Kinkade kissing leaves with golden caresses.
So much more:
pinks, pops and pitch pine and yellow, layers of lush,
delicate and cherry, cedar, plum, red maples, magnolia!
Watercolor fireworks sprout from the cream.
To say beautiful amounts to a crass joke.
Cameras can’t capture periphery in a frame.
If only.
Time later—a turn, to return, to remember—take in, captivate again.
Let’s get this heart beating.
Exhale.
These lungs—
Five o’clock the surge resumes.
Eighteen and a half miles.
Crayola 64 transcendence—pastel and pencil, ephemeral majesty.
The sun soaking sweeping canopies in melted butter.
Licking lips at ice cream scooped clouds slipping into rusty horizons.
Cornucopias of leaves the colors of a candy store.
Gaia how you flaunt, and so unknowingly—painting masterpieces in passing.
Acceleration back onto the highway as it intersects with more highways.
Filling every vein and throughway.
Transporting life to fringes—fingers.
Vehicles scurrying red blood cells, white blood cells.
Yellow purple, orange blue, black silver lining, four-wheeled, retractable roof cells.
Gnarled street signed conglomerations, overpasses, underpasses, metal, barricades,
flashing lights, white font on green, white font on green over asphalt
asphalt asphalt over cement, potholes, sink holes more asphalt
and 7,145,249 and 5/8ths fuming blood cells and half as many semi-trucks
all devoted on going somewhere.
Civilization, call it progress.
The Big Apple, it’s rotting.
Beloved humanity, is this your comparable superlative?
For in the approaching season you will tarnish the glittering snow scapes,
transforming marshmallow rapture into the feces-streaked slush of my sin;
into scattered splotches of melting coffee custard.
