In the Pocket Watch the Birdie

out the driveway down the street
stop for the wild turkeys
real wild turkeys, not the whisky
turn right this corner, turn left on that, looks like it might rain
depth of sky - which I seem to notice a lot - shimmers in hazy blue and dingy white in obscured morning sun over the hot green hills. It's like hot soup.

A couple of miles and I'm coming to the first campus traffic light, a few minutes late. The jumbled clusters of buildings fill the landscape ahead instead of fallow fields, corn fields, tobacco fields and tree lines. Some joker with some kind of flag on his SUV pulls out in front of me from a side road. He cut it close enough for me to brake slightly. He's tailing another car who had pulled out with just enough time, but he's riding someone else's good judgement.

But here it is - rural traffic - and everyone is a few minutes late on Friday. Rural traffic is what you get when 3,000 people all work in the same spot. Most of us will spend more time at this one long traffic light than we did driving from our homes to campus. Mr. in a hurry is stuck at the light in the lane next to me. The flag on the SUV has the campus mascot on it and the vehicle itself is painted school colors. Immediately, I know who it is - a top administrator. I notice I'm surrounded by a campus power block all also stuck on their commute. Behind me I can see in my rearview mirror another associate vice rear admiral type that I know. Off my left tail light a dean is fiddling with the stereo in his large sedan. People do glance around and nod at each other. I look for a CD to put in - Elvis Costello, My Aim is True. The song kicks in. Welcome to the (end of the) Working Week.