Flying Down Interstate 5

Redding Poem 4 “Flying Down Interstate 5” We departed Redding at 3:45, In the dead of an October night. Those tumultuous streets were morgues then, As we raced to the deserted Interstate 5, Zooming across the snoozing Sacramento River, Going at a constant speed of 85, Passing the snoring cities of Red Bluff, Chico and Yuba City, Slicing through the darkness of early morning, With the tule fog scratching over the countryside, Shrouding the distant lights like blinders on a roan. One city after another, my speeding treads arriving In dark sleepy Sacramento in two hours. With the sun not waking yet, but stirring, The internal beast passed Stockton as a blur in time, With other speeding drivers merging onboard, As insistent captains of their own landlocked ships. Then looming before us, the San Joaquin canvass; A devouring flatness five hundred miles long, Of faraway farmlands sleeping overtime, The majestic surreal banality of Central California, Magnetizing us, hypnotizing us to the hastening flow, Of southern currents and windy traipsings; This caravan of one, this golden fueled protrusion, Of the nomadic heartbeat; the inertly-moving soul search; This final journey to the rapids of my youth, Where undead ghost boys still climb the rebar rungs, Atop the old tower on the water’s edge, Still spit into the blue, slow-paced river below.