Mountain people, desert people, people of the plains. Hill country people, beach people, people of the woods. Where I live we are no sort of people that I can name. We dwell in passability, a fairer house than…meh. Not flat, not really hilly. Embattled trees look more like survivors than victors. Fleeting green fading to yellows, oranges and browns. No mountains or seas. Stock ponds, reservoirs, creeks and majestic drainage easements. Sometimes dump trucks will pile gravel beside the road and, if you squint at the right time of the darkling evening, it’s like a mountain on the horizon. In our city we have a few of the worlds grandest traffic mix-masters, regal pillars elevating the glorified side roads against the blazing vastness of the Texas sky. We are an industry preserve, a last home for many endangered species of backhoe and grain elevator. Gas wells greet the morning with the churn of their mating dance, trying to woo the Earth’s crust. Hawks perch on microwave relay towers, gazing predation at the traffic below. And here we are, metroplex people. People of the offramp. Last remnant of a booming demographic.
If I open my lane to you, merge gently. Do not betray my trust, spurn my loving gift. Though I’ve been playing coy, I’ve see you there for a while, trying to coax me, to seduce me into spreading my lane so you can slide in front of me, lusting for me to yield to you the sweetness of my precious right of way. And your dance has done its job. Not too pushy, but not too tentative, which I hate. If I let you in, I want you to go hard, to get busy and do it right. I don’t want to end up rolling my eyes and pulling away from you, annoyed that I was ever foolish enough to give such a gift to a loser like you. Let’s do this. Here I go, opening up a little. Your move.
The other day I saw a raven perched on freeway divider, a large, black corvus corax, not a common sight for me. I see more grackles each day than I ever hope to see again in my life, huge, annoying bird herds of noisy quiscalus quiscula lining up on wire and crowding trees and trying to cover the world in white bird shit. But this raven was alone, buffeted by the roadwind of passing cars, pickups and tractor-trailers, truculus semi. He was there for me, I know this. He had some message he wanted to convey with the passing glance of just one of his deep, black eyes. The eyes of ravens are each singularities that, if you enter through them, take you through time and space to place where doom and fate play chess for the souls of tragic humans, homo mortalis. I threw a half-eaten corndog at the raven and sped off, Lynyrd Skynyrd blasting from the cassette player. I don’t know.
Hello, friends. I trust you’re well.
Later. Love.