This serious night that knows only waiting
wearies the line of us bound for Fort Wayne.
It slumps the postures,
turns luggage to chairs,
and makes a bed of the floor,
where a man dressed in scrubs
has stretched against a wall,
head on a hard-ribbed suitcase.
When headlights flash the gate open,
we jolt alert, tense as night lynxes.
Our backs arch then straighten,
the smallest of muscles poised to hunt for a seat.
Within seconds of boarding,
we survey our chances,
debate odds of rejection,
and pounce on the first empty chair we see.
Claims staked and bags settled,
sixty-four strangers commit their souls
to sail the expanse of Midwestern lands,
the vast curved platter that once cupped an ancient sea
now gathering and holding us in uncertain intimacy.
Soon the last of the dark folds itself into our dreaming minds
as we slumber in our seats past town after town,
and the sweet cadence of a Spanish lullaby
cradles caffeinated hip-hop beats
that leak from pulsing headphones near the back.
Discrete snores rasp out here and there,
like the first popcorn kernels to punch the bag bigger.
And far ahead in the first row,
a small rectangle burns in the gloom,
action film inflaming an insomniac screen.
Drifting in and out of wakefulness,
we nod to the rows of towering lamps
that follow loose curving lines of the highway,
hypnotizing us as we hurtle past.
The lamps unfurl, curl, whip left, sway right,
making patterns like feathers being shuffled,
the tremble of tall grasses before the prairie storm,
bluestems tossed and sown by spinning wheels of chance.
Come seven o’clock, a deep veer shakes us awake,
signals an exit that breaks the spell of endless highway.
And soon the chiming incantations of waking phones
ring out like singing bowls that circle an Indiana dawn.
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