Lights

Driving the speed limit, north on I-5. The landscape is made up of darkness, red tail lights, white painted dashes curving left, and an orange-gray cloud defining part of the northern horizon. A set of lights slowly rises from the ground out by that horizon, first moving straight up, then angling slightly left – a plane taking off at Sea-Tac. The plane has risen high enough for it’s headlight beams to strike the surface of the cloud. The beams lay out a path the plane follows into the cloud, and its lights are extinguished. They flash through twice where the cloud is thin, then disappear. The plane flies out from behind the cloud awhile later, tiny now, reduced to an indistinct clump of lights. . . . The landscape is made up of red tail lights, straight white painted dashes, signs for fast food restaurants, and a cloud reaching out from the north. Rain suddenly splatters against the windows and I turn on the windshield wipers.