On the last Saturday
of my 40s, I drive alone
to Fish Creek to take
the Sunset Bike Trail
at Peninsula State Park.
It occurs to me
as I review the map,
then fold it into small rectangles
and put it into my back pocket,
that if I live to be 96,
it’s a decade per mile.
Miles 1 and 2 are gone faster
than I can remark, tall grasses
and small dense trees huddle
on either side,
mud on the trail
from the rains I never saw
pulls me sideways,
and I can’t see much at all;
But all along
Miles 3 and 4,
Lake Michigan
opens up on my left,
hurling itself
over and over
in small tantrums against
the worn rocks and pebbles,
the bottle caps and driftwood,
while on my right the sunlight is
shredded through the branches and leaves
of the still green trees
and it falls and falls and falls
in smaller and smaller and smaller
pieces
to land
on the forest floor,
shards of light that you can barely
see at all.
[Interim poem:
Hark!
Lake on my left and
Woods on my right,
they shuffle their feet
and finally ask sincerely
which shall have a place with me
in Heaven,
but I cannot choose,
I can’t abide a Heaven
that doesn’t contain them
both, it’s a failure
of my imagination, I suppose, but
tales of
Streets of Gold
and Milk and Honey
and never-ending Light
and the unfailing singing of Sincere Hymns
bore me to tears and truly,
terrify me.
I can only hope
all that was figurative, Paul,
(was it even Paul?
Maybe it was John,
he seems more like the
apocalyptic dreamer and
a bit of a kill-joy)
because I don’t want a
Heaven without this green glade,
without these smooth pebbles
passed back and forth
between the hands
of the splashing waves
in the cold, clean water
along Lake Michigan’s
shore, I don’t want a
Hereafter
without guitars
and bikes and dirt trails
strung with shining cobwebs
and trees that have toppled and
pulled up the roots and boulders to
show what hides in the dark
Earth,
I can’t see a
Paradise
that doesn’t have
a pitch black lake of midnight moonless sky
harboring a loosely moored fleet of stars
that sail into dreams,
no, I don’t see that
at all.
Here ends
the reading of
the interim poem. Selah.]
Mile 5
cuts suddenly through
a park,
children on a seesaw,
children like ducklings
that are quacked over, buckled,
brought in line
but I am
veering away from the lake
and into uncharted
territory, I have a map
but it doesn’t show these hills
as the lake falls away behind me,
it can’t predict this
slow grind until I’m
standing on my pedals
and just waiting for
a plateau
to catch my breath
before the next rise
but still and all,
as Miles Six, Seven, Eight
unfold,
it’s uphill and beautiful
in the shade of the afternoon,
the far-away sky
is the surface of an unmapped lake,
the long smooth trunks of the trees
holding up their leaves
like an offering
of lily-pads,
this congregation of trees
swaying in the current
like seaweed
while I swim slowly through them
like a fish,
silent –
the road
uphill and beautiful,
the road
uphill and beautiful,
rising
upward to the light.
Halfway North 