The Conshohocken Curve

The cars roar along the winding Schuylkill river with its splinter skullers seeming, at this distance, to drift without friction beneath the bridge. If one could zoom in you'd see the grimacing, the sheen of perspiration coating the arms of the men. They stroke against the mollassees as we navigate through the traffic, parallel in our respective channels, shifting rush rattling gravel bed overhead wires of the Amtrak lines cut through clumps of gypsy moth cotton candy. The flipping cards of spraypainted billboards and defaced murals suddenly thud to a halt. Trucks sit like dead hulks on the road, engines chugging. Across the river from the cardboard cut out neighborhoods of Manayunk, we are stuck. But there is no accident, no obstruction, no flashing lights anywhere. The road is dry. It's just the curve, the fear of the curve and its possibilities that has frozen us in our tracks until we can hit that gas pedal, tug at the oars, while the boats beside us slide effortlessly by.