Garden State Parkway

The inlet's death scent anaerobic mud echoed the landfill just down the road this morning as I drove behind the fog on rain-soaked roads and the spray of leftover winter salt. The trucks spat rocks and clouds against my windshield and made me jump off beat as The Boss cried about glory days. Construction didn't halt even in the downpours even though the evidence of progress evaded the human eye, and the dumptrucks kept hauling the damp remains of asphalt from one mile-marker to another. I suppose that's a sort of progress, moving trash from mile 44 to mile 63 but the burnt rubber tire smell kept burning while headlights crept up tailpipes and disappeared into trunks in the sequence of dominoes. Electrified steel and the taste of ozone kept me from nodding when the disc shifted and The Boss still croaked of blue-collar days he'd long ago abandoned, tho he kept the bandannas and kept crying about the Garden State where the smell of decay taints the morning.