At Night on I-95

On the baptism of drudgery.

Photo by Lionello DelPiccolo on Unsplash

Last month I confessed my previously tenuous relationship with free verse poetry. This was still in full swing when, a few years ago, I joined the then newly-created Habitation poetry group — a branch off the great tree of The Habit membership — first joined and found myself among the likes of such wordsmiths as Joy E. S. Manning. I was immediately hesitant. What had I gotten myself into?

Something wonderful, it turns out. Not only have these people made me a better writer, but in doing so they’ve made me a better person: celebrating my successes, meeting my vulnerability with tenderness, and coming alongside me in my creating. My best poems have their fingerprints on them, and I’ve learned so much from their work.

It was Owen Barfield who gave me the new framework for understanding the spiritual component within poetry and prose alike — poesy — which works itself into our preconceived ideas, planting beautiful things in their place. It was in Joy Manning’s poetry I first experienced it.

Even though it was in free verse.

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At Night on I-95

by Joy E. S. Manning

Used by permission of the author.

Night falls on these eight lanes
where traffic congregates at all hours.
Stripes, color-sorted by their course and aim,
glow red and white streams that wander
up and down the incline.

Bowled like a gleaming cherry, I stare
as white-light pairs spill down the heights,
making progress that contrasts
with my red-light northward pack,
now at a stand-still.
Flashes like crimson fireflies flicker
here and there to signal new ground
gained, and we inchworm forward
for a yard, then halt again.

Above, the charcoal sky splotches haze
that black treetops tease with their
sway to the tune of the evening breeze
while the lights ribbon and sparkle in
a December display. I sigh.
The edge and aggravation escape
my throat and slip out the open sunroof
window to disperse and blow away
in the chill, brushed to oblivion
by the trees' play.

I trace the stagnant red-light line
and watch it disappear on the dark horizon
with my desired destination
and all my design…
I raise my head to the darkness, a smokey
cloud curtain slides past,
the vast blue-black sky appears
and a crescent moon is revealed.
She beams constant her reflected light
and winks at my uplifted face.

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Full disclosure: my first time through this poem was a haughty one, and had me asking all the familiar questions. Isn’t this just obscure prose? Are we just dressing up a traffic jam? But such quick judgments are where my ignorance shines most (in)glorious. That was my first read. It was on the second I began to see that in tackling the spiritual exhaustion of being stuck in traffic, Joy offers us the opportunity to be transformed along with this drudgery, if only we’ll set our preconceived notions aside and accept it.

From the first we have the all-to-familiar sight of an endless sea of tail and headlights into which our designs and hopes disappear. And doesn’t this at times speak to the flow of our lives in general? “Stuck in traffic” — everyone trying to get ahead, but with no real progress being made — feels like an apt description of many a day.

But even here at the outset of the poem there is already a transformation at work. The flow (or lack of it) is a stream, which could at once be the never-ending and grueling line that it is or a peaceful rivulet. And with the language of water in play, opportunities for new sight arrive on the scene as well. The white line of progress in the opposite direction both mocks and has the potential to “spill down the heights” like some raging baptism. But how will we interpret this scene, or our own “traffic jams”? It is difficult to accept a renewal of sight when we are at a stand still and facing frustrated plans.

But then again, maybe that’s when we most need it.

However challenging, and however frustrating the “inchworming” down the highway (or through life) the poet cannot help but see fireflies in the taillights, dancing over the river. And so our hearts — still very much aware of the drudge of traffic and all it signifies — are slowly lifted skyward with the poet’s gaze where the clouds part to reveal a “vast blue-black sky.” What had felt like a claustrophobic, out-to-get-us-world is unveiled as the deep, wide wonder it is. There is a kindness Joy employs here, and instead of an “I told you so” embedded in the revelation, it only sweeps our “edge and aggravation…to oblivion” and offers us a gentle wink: a reminder, and a kind of knowing, friendly assurance that beyond our own narrow designs is a greater one.

Joy E. S. Manning delights to find the sometimes hidden creative spirit in others, and is learning to see through the eyes of the Creator. A wife, mother of three, and former neonatal ICU nurse, she is often found at her local museums. Her work has appeared previously in print with Calla Press.

Joy is one of many brilliant poets featured in the forthcoming Habitations: Volume II, the second anthology from the aforementioned Habitation Poetry Group. Keep your eyes and ears peeled for more on that volume.

What stands out to you from Joy’s poem? How do you see it transforming your own experiences of traffic, both real and otherwise? Do you have a favorite line?

I hope you see your “edge and aggravation[s]…brushed to oblivion / by the trees’ play,” and that you’re encouraged in the midst of your own frustrated designs to “raise [your] head to the darkness” and “the vast blue-black sky” for a wink. Sometimes, it takes a second read — a pause, a willingness to see something or someone from a new angle — for us to see the magic at play in the world. And it is at play.

Even in a traffic jam.