Night Driving

In my rear view mirror, the street lights stream behind us like a broken string of pearls on black velvet.  First a necklace, then a bead dropped here and there as we leave the city until there are no more and I am surrounded by the inky darkness. Distant lights of civilization dot the night landscape.  Single lights mark homes and the handful of amber lights on the horizon proclaim a town.

Night smells travel through the vents.  The scent of damp from the evening dew fall; the sharpness of sun-warmed cedar and sage float in, to be momentarily blocked when the clatter of the bridge beneath our wheels stirs up the dank smell of a creek bottom before the scent of the prairie returns.

The golden moon shines down, illuminating far off houses and barns, groves of trees and fields of flowers.  The willow-the-wisp fog that we pass through now and then echoes the clouds that are visible even in the darkness against the midnight sky.

The pickup's lights illuminate the side of the road to the fence line.  Caught in the glare are deer, coyotes and the occasional possum family.   Beyond the fence, a tall, thin man looms out of the darkness, his long legs spread out to brace against the wind.  Finally, my mind resolves this iron man into the windmill tower that it really is.  A lone tree appears briefly.  It has a wild and twisty silhouette, made more beautiful than a forest by its solitude.

Where the pavement is black, my vehicle becomes a spacecraft and the dotted white center lines are stars streaking by as we hurtle through the galaxy towards home.  The blinking red lights on the water and radio towers break the force field and I am again on earth, driving into my home town, eagerly waiting for the corner that will turn me towards my street and home.