Somehow it seems absurd,
these transitions,
life scrunched up like traffic at the red
released in chaos when green says go
when the time is right, and I am ready.

That old cliche about life being a vessel
sailed in one flowing line from port to port?
Nonsense.

Life is more like gridlock on I-55.
Backed up in impossible columns,
hours of waiting for seconds of mad speed,
every-car-for-itself, laws be damned--
And not a Quik-Stop in sight.