TRAFFIC
We throw ourselves on roads.
On mercy.
It’s the same act of faith.
Each spiraling curve
Each pothole,
Each roadwork cut in pavement,
A blunt impact.
The shock absorbers take the hit,
Jolting the body out of alignment.
Driving through LA is off-roading.
You feel every bump,
Every nail in the tire,
The labored breathing of your engine.
This is a war horse fed from gouging troughs.
Country folk warn;
“Drive offense, not defense.”
But city dwellers know the difference
Between reckless and aggressive.
Reckless is weaving through traffic,
Missing others, already fifteen over, by inches.
Aggressive is not stopping when the light turns goldenrod.
They know, “Go through, or make camp for a cool twenty-two.”
First impressions form in snap seconds.
A tapped break: a cautious brain.
Remove yourself from behind those.
Those are the goldenrod full-stops.
Those will make you late.
The roads are a ticking clock.
“City of Angels” refers to spirits in traffic
Keeping movers and shakers alive in transit.
There are thousands.
They surround our steel cocoons,
Catching tires,
Nudging wheels,
Sentinels between us and certain death.
An in-organic mechanism.
Roads and side streets are blood vessels.
Every five minutes
A new architectural moment.
New neighborhood,
New city,
New organ,
All functioning together as one.
One home,
One community,
One body.
The vehicles the platelets
Ranging in size from Prius to semi.
Accidents common as scabs.
Flatbeds a regular guest to the 405, the 10, the 5, the 110, and the 101.
The scrapes and dented sides a testament
To the weary traveler within,
Shouldering a world on speeding rubber,
Zipping by.
Most cannot see the ruins,
They see only pavement and trash,
Stop lights and chain-linked fences.
Even fewer see the majesty,
The former glory, yes, in crumbling pillars
In monuments worn down.
They do not see, cannot grasp,
The true health of a city in re-formation,
In “being rebuilt,” In yellow signs stating
“Please be patient; construction in process.”
That is beauty.
The change.
The former glory made new.
The city where everything loose came to stay,
And dance,
And fling ourselves on roads,
On mercy.
It’s the same act of faith.
The belief we will come home at night,
Alive, and not too broken.
Maybe bruised, scraped, and dinged.
But we can’t let paint jobs stop us living life,
From making our mark.
Funny how so much left to right accumulates,
Eventually, into a spaceship bound for stars.
This is LA.
S. C. Durbois Newsletter
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