For miles and miles and miles the southbound highway: stalled.
A fog of idling cars’ combustion flogs the air: no progress.
Stagnation is repeated in a wide arc to the city’s west and south.
Every major and minor artery clogged.

To the east there are no cars:
maybe a ferry or two:
or a fishing vessel:
Here Lies the Atlantic.

Glut is stamped into the morning of a major American city.
Stamped on every other, major and minor, from sea to shining sea.
“Glut” is the root of “gluttony”, one of seven cardinal sins.
Wisdom traditions wisely name destructive behavior “Sin”.

An accounting:
thirty-thousand dollars of metal and plastic;
twenty gallons of gasoline; one driver;
millions follow millions, mile follows mile;
what could be, should be local bread.

Those rivers frozen: paved with oil; driven by discomfort.
A world-view hurtles stop-motion at a receding horizon,
the horizon recedes forever out of reach.
The politics of fear pretends there is an end.
Intentional blindness is sacrilege.

This is only normal because this is what we know.

“Lovely Traffic Jam”, by Der Benjamin @ deviantart.com