THE BLUR OF THE FAST LANE

 

The Blur of the Fast Lane 

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I’m driving in the fast lane,

Tires humming a frantic hymn on asphalt,

Boxed in tight by highway dividers—

Concrete slabs rising like prison walls,

Cold and gray,

Keeping me tethered to this ribbon of speed,

Cut off from the other side,

From greener hillsides rolling soft under the sun,

Their emerald waves kissed by a breeze I’ll never feel,

From rows of evergreens,

Sentinels of pine and shadow,

Their needles glinting with a stillness I can’t touch.

The world beyond is a taunt,

A watercolor smear through streaked windows,

Fading as I barrel forward,

Trapped in this steel cocoon.  

My mind churns,

A hive buzzing with the hurry of hours,

Each tick of the watch a lash on my wrist,

Seconds bleeding into minutes,

Minutes clotting into obligations—

Deadlines scrawled in red ink,

Meetings stacked like bricks,

Cell phones shrieking their endless alarms,

A chorus of beeps and trills,

Voices clawing through the ether,

Demanding more, always more.

The dashboard glows,

A cruel clock counting down,

And I’m swept along,

A cog in the machine of must-dos,

Too busy to glance sideways,

Too rushed to breathe anything but exhaust.  

Roses wilt on the roadside,

Petals curling brown,

Their velvet throats choked with dust—

No noses pause to drink their scent,

That faint perfume of summer’s fleeting blush,

Lost to the wind of my passing.

Crickets weave their songs on humid nights,

A silver thread of sound stitching the dark,

Simple, pure,

Yet muted by my indifference,

Their chorus drowned by the roar of engines,

The hiss of tires slicing through silence.

I speed past,

Windows sealed tight,

Ears deaf to their fragile symphony,

Blind to the grace in their smallness,

The quiet plea of a world I’ve left behind.  

Days bleed into each other,

A torrent rushing with increasing speed,

One lending itself to the next,

A conveyor belt of sunrises and dusks,

Each dawn a flicker,

Each night a smudge on the horizon.

Time accelerates,

A river carving deeper into the earth,

Dragging me along its current,

No pause to mark the shift of seasons—

The golden flare of autumn leaves,

The frost tracing veins on winter glass,

The tender green of spring’s first sigh.

I hurtle forward,

Eyes squeezed shut to the spirit pulsing in all things,

The heartbeat thrumming through the hills,

The whisper woven into the wind,

The life glowing in every blade of grass.  

The fast lane is a cage I’ve built,

Highway dividers my jailers,

Their shadows stretching long across the pavement,

Locking me from the wild beyond—

Fields where deer graze at twilight,

Antlers catching the last light,

Streams that ripple silver under a swollen moon,

Their babble a lullaby I’ll never hear.

My hands grip the wheel,

Knuckles white,

Mind racing with the tick-tock of duty,

While the phone buzzes like a trapped fly,

A leash I can’t snap.

The roses fade unseen,

The crickets sing to empty skies,

And I wonder—

When did I trade the scent of earth

For the sting of gasoline,

The song of night

For the drone of progress?  

Days pile into weeks,

Weeks into months,

A blur of motion I can’t brake—

The greener hillsides recede,

Evergreens shrink to specks in the mirror,

Their stillness a rebuke to my haste.

I’ve closed my eyes to the spirit,

To the glow in the ordinary—

The way sunlight dances on wet leaves,

The hush of dawn before the world wakes,

The pulse of life in every rustling branch.

I’m driving blind,

Boxed in by my own rush,

A prisoner of the fast lane,

Speeding past the beauty I’ve forgotten how to see,

Past the richness I’ve forgotten how to feel,

Until the hours tick out,

And all that’s left

Is the echo of what I’ve lost