Keilor-bound at the wheel, a man plucks his middle brow over the hill. Trucks speak in whistling brakes; cars speak in blinkers; billboards speak in covered-up breaths and we, doubting ourselves, tremble forth. Across gorges and bridges, organ-pipes hum in the silent chorale of a wasted commute. Gold glints through gum-trees; grace glints in mirrors.Continue reading “Redeem the Commute”
Tag Archives: traffic
Gratitude
…The notion of some infinitely gentle Infinitely suffering thing. – T.S. Eliot, “Preludes” I will be late for work: the traffic tells me so, and Adam’s curse run deep in roads too busy to know their name. Beaten by roadside lies the debris and dust of abandoned schedules: here someone burst a tyre, there aContinue reading “Gratitude”
Too Much Light 6: Prepare Your Crowns
Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord: the light is blinding and the days are long; the sun confuses us, the bustle deafens. Lord: let us walk. Let’s leave our cars, our homes, our days and walk. The Son has stories brighter than noon, pavilions for theContinue reading “Too Much Light 6: Prepare Your Crowns”
Too Much Light 5: Prepare Your Knees
The climb – up hills, up bridges, up avenues – may smart on feeble knees, yet walk. This is not a path for driving. There are no lanes free and your mind will not process the path from inside a car. Static and traffic-bound, you will not see the guiding star and will notContinue reading “Too Much Light 5: Prepare Your Knees”
Too Much Light 4: Prepare Your Feet
No room, and yet there is room: in shoulders, between lanes, by roadsides, in industrial paddocks. No room, perhaps, for cars, yet feet have space to move, if you, traffic-sore, should rise and step into the space where lavender shifts in wind, gnarled tree trunks climb to upward possibility.Continue reading “Too Much Light 4: Prepare Your Feet”
Too Much Light 3: Prepare your ears
Slow down. Road, rain, traffic slow you down but you are fast. Your heart pounds to silence the road, and buds turned inward block out growth. What speaks is asphalt and the music in your ears, the hum of engines idling, the unexpected pause. Yet sky is telling another story: look, the clouds gather roundContinue reading “Too Much Light 3: Prepare your ears”
Too Much Light 2: Prepare Your Eyes
Highways have no beauty in heat of summer: the road flattens and grass lies thirsty by the way. Nothing to see (the asphalt carpet rolls through nowhere fast), we dream of nothing but our pedestrian destinations. Should someone tell the day that new light might dawn across a languid, surprised hill, it would chuckle. And so the road stays nonchalant,Continue reading “Too Much Light 2: Prepare Your Eyes”
Too Much Light 1: Prepare the Way
Delays are bad today; nothing moves. Contained at interchange, a stencil house smiles, as though to make this place feel more like home. Small comfort: we go nowhere fast. The morning yawns through Western traffic haze; the day’s light’s too bright. We squint in glare. Lane changes ache; all is standstill until a way canContinue reading “Too Much Light 1: Prepare the Way”
Street Camping
We watched, static in our waiting spots, lights red, traffic backed up Queensberry Street, as the purple tent, pegless, half air-borne, somersaulted across the road and stopped at the stilled bumper of a nearby car. The car was motionless, like ours, yet not waiting to start. Content, the purple tent rested, royal, carefree in thisContinue reading “Street Camping”
Inhumane Traffic
It’s strange the impact that these moments have As, silently congealing in our cars, We feel somehow abject, dehumanised, And in that moment that is what we are: Mute and seething that we couldn’t save Time on roads much worse than realised. Still, this is not as bad as it could be: Our tyres areContinue reading “Inhumane Traffic”
The Consolations of Writing 