Back Seat, Virginia
By 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