Beautiful Music
July 11 2022
If it isn't winter
it's road repair season.
So we complain,
not only about the potholes
but the potholes being fixed.
Although this is even bigger,
the whole road
dug-up and rebuilt.
Traffic stops/starts/stops,
funnelled into one narrow lane
each way.
Hot sun
ripples off the pavement
dust chokes the air.
Heavy engines rev
bulldozers rattle
embattled workers shout.
Tempers are short
the wait long.
Behind the city bus
the car fills
with diesel exhaust
and I'm feeling claustrophobic.
Late, I keep looking to my watch
as if this will change anything,
eye the gauge
for over-heating.
When cool jazz
comes on the radio
Miles Davis playing,
sweet and soulful
and in no rush.
How many decades have passed
since these vibrations were caught
and saved for posterity?
I sit and listen
reflecting on my spoiled day.
Which will be forgotten
in a couple more,
just as asphalt crumbles
cars are scrapped
schedules get disrupted.
While beautiful music lasts.
And this performance
is the perfect distraction
a soothing balm.
So with the A/C cranked up
and my eyes drifting shut
I lean back, and surrender to it,
head resting comfortably
and all the tension in my neck
letting go.
And as I listen
the dust seems to settle
the bus becomes a blur,
the din
of steel on steel
mercifully recedes.
Until the honking
startles me back to now.
As if I could go any faster, I think,
annoyed at the jacked-up truck
panting at my bumper,
its Confederate flag
dead black paint
and custom gunrack
looming in the rear view mirror.
So I inch ahead
only to stop
bumpers almost touching
a few feet further on.
A poem about the frustrations of city life, stupid drivers (by how hard they still drive — jackrabbit starts, racing up to red lights — I don't see why everyone's complaining about the price of gas!), and the balm of music.
(Although I confess, the “Confederate flag“ reference may have lacked a certain subtlety. A little too on the nose!)
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