Traffic

This poem was written before we moved into a much simpler life here in Bakersfield, CA. It was inspired by an all too common occurrence in our overcrowded harried lives when we lived in the big city. The "serpent" reference is significant because the devil is described as the great deceiver.

Traffic
Hollow faces turn their passionless gaze
Toward the crowded horizon…

Long ago, a liars voice beckoned and somewhere someone responded, the
rest herded after.

Generations following this path have cut a groove into our humanity.
we all spill into it, pressing upon
each other, competing for progress toward prosperity,
all energy of resistance to the voice
dissipated.
Sheer momentum has taken over.

No one questions the migration of this mob,
each assuming his place in the endless line,
each child of the scientific age mechanically clinging to his place, only
questioning relative position and not the destination.

It does not feel the sublime, this serpentine demigod.
Its poisonous breath stifles sensation.
It assimilates individuality, expanding its mass through augmentation.
It grows while the people shrink.
It converts the autonomous into automation.

Each looks to the other only for help in their movements toward
The unnamed, unknown and unworthy goal.

No one pauses.
No one thinks.
Individuality is swallowed up
as vermin before The Serpent…

But the traffic grows.



May, 2006