Merging

I sit, the blue of my car pressing back the wet
The flow of 8:30 am curves past me as I stay paused
Waiting for the shift of red to green
I sit above the vein of cars slipping East and West
A beautiful snake of steel and colors
Taken from a child’s watercolor paint set

Charcoal trees, a large-dark blotch against the pewtery morning,
Create a pause in the time of my thought and place
Though movement of wheels and people hiss past me
I am stilled –
And time-sense is wiped away with the brush of rubber
Against a sheet of glass
The dark gray block of oak and evergreen
Is a moment in my future
A half-mile or so away;
Something to become my present and my past
I’m not yet there,
But I see it as a marker of where I’m going –
A place to pass, and pass again on the direction home
And something I have passed before

I am the only one that knows this,
There in my little box of gears and doors and cushioned seats,
Even though it is something we all have

I think of you – as I often do as my day runs through me –
For you sit, always perched on the shelf of my thoughts,
Ready to slip down into my vision and senses
Your life is a separate parallel from mine
And yet –
It’s bending to connect
Like the trees, you’re something for me to reach,
But are also a moment of past and present

Red becomes green, an arrow to my left;
My moment has passed.
Time-sense returns with the brush of rubber
Against a sheet of glass

I slip down the seam of asphalt and paint,
Thinking of my forming day of email questions and answers
And the music I’ve collected in a bag on the passenger seat
To refresh the stack of CDs on my desk
Our life is a collection of melodies, yours and mine,
Something you create – and something I take
On a disk of plastic and silver to help me pass the time;
The mundane made velvet-fun

I am stopped again by red, to wait for green
That keeps the morning flow clean and easy;
With a shift of lever and a press of pedal,
I become a link in the snake of steel and colors
Taken from a child’s watercolor paint set
The smudge of trees shadows past me, forgotten --
Meaning lost in the frequencies of the busywork in my head,
And narrow choices on the radio

My day is now behind me as I write this;
But like the trees I’ll pass again tomorrow
Another forms on the clock

And, yet – I am still seated in that moment,
Suspended above the freeway moving East and West
I am a circle moving forward,
Like the pulled coils of a spring

You’ve slipped from your shelf again – I can’t quite see you
But I feel your footprints in my thoughts –
A hint of something coming
Of something present
And something past

But unlike the darkened trees against the sky
You I will not forget to see