Late Night Dream Drive

Playing with words when it's time for sleep.
These in particular have been rolling around in my brain a few times over the last couple of days.
Time to put them to rest.
Maybe then I can get some as well.

*~*~*~*



"A beautiful day, the drive into Pennsylvania from Jersey had been surprisingly stress-free. An open road stretched before us, maybe all the way up into the mountains if we were fortunate.

Just past the Philadelphia area we moved into steady evergreen forests and some altitude, both things I'd missed since coming east from Seattle years before. Certain impressions are printed on a person's soul; helps them find out exactly what kind of elf they are, as Tolkien might say...

Merging onto a new road many junctions later, we headed up one of the small, exhilarating inclines on a highway both more and less tame than the one passing through Philadelphia's surroundings.

The traffic began to slow then crawl at what seemed a least-likely spot that Saturday.

It was hard to see what might be causing the unexpected jam. One can choose to proceed with or without faith in these situations.

Several sudden movements caught my eye simultaneously. Along the side of the road came children, one carting a smaller other on her back, then a few more, followed by still others.

Where were they coming from? What was that look in their eyes? Were they spectators from this traffic lineup of cars, or was this their day at the beach, only running back our way in the 'wrong' direction? I made a mental note once their group seemed to run out of steam.

Without warning, the line-up inched onward over pebbly pavement again, slowly as a slug or sloth crawl. Pretty soon, it turned into a steady trickle of forward motion and working to keep safe from distractions: cones, then policemen waving us on.

There was a knowledge of orbit. Coming closer to the center, gravity accelerates.

To the right a jeep stood alone, present and immediate. Under its hood cackled a fully-fledged fire, something magnetic in the life of its flames so evenly spread under the hood as though smoothed by a butter knife. Billowing clouds of dirty smoke issued from the engine compartment sides, now burned clear through, perfectly invisible.

When would it go off? Here was the possibility of a roaring inferno. A vehicular supernova. There was no telling when. Hard to push away the urgency that information lent these moments of proximity.

At last I could identify the look in the deep-pooled eyes of the girl on the side of the road. She had been young, but she was the oldest of the only group to get away."

~L.E.