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Back Seat, Virginia Brendan McKennedy Half-sleeping in the back with my seatbelt on, my face against the cold window. The radio has faded; all I hear is the low pulsing of the steelbelts on asphalt, a dull hum that expands until it fills my head. A harmony rises, the strident chord of an 18-wheeler passing slow on the left, straining against the upgrade, which I can feel in my neck. In my half-dream these Blue Ridge Mountains are Ice Age beasts, hirsute with pine, hunkered against the cold and loping through the night mist in herds. The wheels da-dunk across a bridge joint and I open my eyes. Wiping my breath from the glass, I peer out across the dark water, where boat lights on the Shenandoah bloom, pink and red, like geraniums. Copyright © 2002 Brendan McKennedy |