I was heading south toward Spring City, Tennessee on I-81. What a night it had been. High winds and blinding rain on back in Virginia running alongside the Blue Ridge Mountains. Dark, windy, rainy and scary too. More than scary really. Hair-raising, daunting, fearsome, alarming sound good too. I was unblinking-tired. There was no way to pull off the road-tired. I survived.
Later, when I got to Tennessee I picked up I-40 outside Knoxville. I was heading west, looking for state route 27 south. By this time I was out of the rain but it was late and I needed to keep on truckin’. I-40 was under construction. The traffic was that time of night when everyone is heading home from and evening out. Mix that up with a good dose of long-distance freight hauling and it gets exciting. Four lanes of machinery jockeying for position, barely fitting through narrowed lanes formed by jersey barriers and lighted barrels. It was quite a ride. It’s times like this I get the feeling that highway travel is probably the most dangerous sport there is.
I recorded the event in this poem that follows. It was four years ago. It seems like forever ago.
Peace,
Gentle George
20 February 2019
ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER
Part One
I-40 in Tennessee,
Exhaustion in the fast lane,
Dicing it out with eighteen wheelers,
Ten wheelers, and four wheelers,
Night and road-work signs crowd the shoulders.
A billboard shrieks from the edge,
“Skydiving Ahead!”,
The mind switches to the image,
Distraction takes over
For a full minute.
Three days of long stretches at the wheel,
Like falling from great heights,
Back to the ground,
Eyes on the open door,
A face and eyes follow my descent.
The earth far below
But its approach certain,
My shirt and trousers flap,
I’m the guy in the long black coat,
Falling from the Golden Gate.
Skydiving seems suicidal,
I’m too busy right now,
I’m operating a vehicle
At seventy-five,
On the edge of a different world.
G. M. Goodwin
3 February 2015
Playing Fair and Being Kind 