"Elegy For Green Yellow Red"

I'm stopped at a light. It's a perfect morning. (Perfect anyway as July
can manage.) Long shadows, the air mild. Hardly any cars out. Yet
we wait here, patiently, for the light to change. --Traffic lights are
one of the two or three unconsidered things that make city living
possible. Yet there are people who want to get rid of them. Even a
pause of thirty seconds is too much affront for their egotism to
stand. When a traffic light stops working, anarchy ensues. It can
be good anarchy, as drivers politely allow one car at a time to have
its turn. Or it can be bad anarchy, with everyone trying to force
their way through, & cars slamming into cars out of sheer stubb-
ornness. But what these selfish people want, is not any kind of
anarchy; rather, they want a definite order to prevail. First, the big
awesome Hummers--everyone stops for them, & they never have to
stop at all. Then those bulbous SUV's--they stop only for Hummers.
Then i guess the rest of us--on mopeds or in dogcarts for all they
care--we stop for everyone, & nobody stops for us.
   When i think of how burningly some people
resent the very existence of traffic lights--that momentary equality--
i know them for a sickness & a scourge. But i don't know what to do
about it...
   Invisibly, insatiably, they are doing away with
the traffic lights.

07 20 03