Spring Commute

Posting a new-ish piece of writing that I've been meaning to edit.  Comments welcome!

 

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Spring Commute

 1.

Heading down the 401 with the Barbaras and Bonnies and Brendas before seven in the morning.  The sun is still low in the sky, just a suggestion of light climbing the tops of the trees.  All the women named Barbara and Bonnie and Brenda drive sensible, North American cars, Regals and Luminas and LeSabres.  Their make-up looks practised and sedate, their suits appropriate and professional.  They are beating the traffic, going to the places where they hold responsible jobs in office administration, finance, human resources, but there’s something around the eyes or their grip on the steering wheel, something pursued and worried.  It’s as if they are dogged, even on the morning commute, run to ground by the Lisas and Kellys and Jennifers nipping at their heels.  As I pass Barbara (or maybe Bonnie or Brenda), she clutches the wheel, eyes steely and straight ahead.  No matter how much faster I go, I get the impression Barbara is miles ahead, ready and girded to meet her pursuers.

 2.

Monday morning.  Another spring commute.  To ease the boredom, I start to take a body count.  Putting aside the parts of corpses, the clumps of hair glued to the asphalt with guts, some of the corpses reduced to woolly sweaters discarded on the road, indefinable carnage, London to Woodstock looks like this:

Raccoon, raccoon, rabbit, raccoon, deer, possum, raccoon, raccoon, raccoon, groundhog.

I’ve barely crested the hill, Woodstock spread out across the saucer of its valley like an apron draped on a warm lap, when the sky warms like an oven element.  On a morning like this, who could maintain a death toll?  I look to the shoulders and start counting the strips of discarded tires from transports.

1, 2, 3, 4 …

3.

Traffic thins so I contemplate the morning drive. 

Don’t get me wrong:  I feel a kinship for the Barbaras and Bonnies and Brendas.  But as I pass out of Oxford County, I drive into an imaginary landscape.  A gauzy blanket of fog lies atop the sleeping fields of soy and corn, juvenile plants wriggling their toes in the rich earthy bed.  This is a dream place, or a place I dream.  I start to imagine the Barbaras as the roadkill, the tires of their Regals and Luminas blown out, scattered on this asphalt ribbon.  In this imagined geography, passing, passing, are we as good as the strewn remains of the dead?  Are we as good as dead?  Am I just another casualty of the commute, another bit of the flotsam, weighed and considered and preyed over by ministering crows?  I am turning this around in my head and driving almost unconscious amidst occasional swirls of ground fog, for the moment, making good time.