connect the dots

A highway spreads into the darkness like california redwoods. Unidirectional, jutting towards the sky, its trunk is traced by wavering wrinkles. Pairs of wisps shear through the rain to their own cold houses, hotels, parking lots, or ditches.

There was a plane, but now, a sole contrail hides between the waning moon and pimpled ridges of swollen clouds. He sighs into the microphone at another destination. A strange bed once again, his hours lent to others who lend theirs to the vastness of the land.

Mountains loom in the distance on the horizon, or perhaps just past it. In these nights too many will pass over the off-ramp and too many will pass under. They shiver from the cold night with thread bare jackets, thin flesh, and the assurance that each dawn soon brings dusk.