Waking, it felt oddly like a rush for the airport.
The pre-dawn dark heavy in its silence,
Tempting like the warm woolen winter blanket I’d just left.
The adrenaline slow with a tingle in each tiptoe—
Percolated coffee in my mug, the khakis swish and crunch
With each stepping bump against my canvas bag—
Out the door I crept towards the arms of corporate daybreak,
Leaving paper hole-punch stars as a trail to guide me
In case the sun, too, is slow to ascend.
The white ground driveway crunches in winter dryness.
Car and driver become one,
Sole voyagers on vast concrete pathways
Effortlessly, gracefully gliding to a David Gray album
With a sound pastel, mellow, and calming
Like the whispers of morning.
Slowly there are others, too:
Red lights in migration.
Then appear the archangelic mammoths:
Yellow and flashing, in lead and flank,
Five in rank and file.
They move in crescent form.
I nestle in their steely bosom.
Safe and small, I float along in their wake,
Work bag tucked snug in the upholstered passenger seat
Protected like a daily crossword puzzle during pre-board.
The mammoths do a dance in unison,
Slowly, smoothly curling in their battered plows
Like ballet dancers’ long curved arms
Or the swooping pull and wave of a whale’s tail back to the sea.
Then, as suddenly as they appeared
In shield-form to battle my wintry drive,
The convoy is given an inaudible
Command to fall out, one by one,
Down a faded, frosted right-hand street.
It was a Sunday at 4 a.m.
And I had, perhaps was sent, heavenly escorts.
One can do much worse
Than greet the day with snowplows.
