The Commute--An Idyll

It's cold in northwest Oregon at six thirty in the morning. At that time, before the first glow over the Cascades, I'm guzzling coffee, adjusting the radio stations out of the static, and barreling down I-5 past Woodburn. It's a dark, wet crossing, this trip south. I pass the 45th Parallel. I click my wipers up, then down, fiddle with the defrost. I emerge from the spray behind an eighteen-wheeler. I yawn, then sing, then am quiet. There's an amnesic plane we enter, on this road, in the pre-dawn rain. It's a murky fugue, spanning 50 miles or so between the outlet malls at Exit 271 and Highway 34. It's where we all lose our grips. Once, I was in south Salem before I realized that I hadn't turned on my headlights. I've lost track of the speed limit, of my peripheral vision, and of my thermos, buried under my lunchpail and backpack in the passenger seat. The Cavalier continues its noble passage; time blurs as the trees, broken lane lines, threads of rain on my windshield, and glimmering red tail lights melt together. For when I turn off Wilsonville Road and onto the interstate, I join a great river, and the current pulls me to Corvallis. We can never leave Corvallis, not really anyway. Her siren song draws us back.