Category: Biking

Crivitz Piggly Wiggly Philosophy

June 3, 2018

It’s a Thursday in May after five

when I swing into the Piggly Wiggly with two bikes

on the back of my SUV, and the dog inside;

The woman slicing my deli ham

struggles with the wrapper on the summer sausage, limps like

her hip is bad, too; she paces, trapped behind the glass cage;

When I check out, another woman

bagging my groceries eyes me and when I say “Everything in paper except for

the cold stuff,” she rephrases:

“Cold stuff in plastic, everything else in paper,”

which is what I said, but in reverse, and she seems disapproving, so then I hedge –

“Well, whatever makes sense.”

And she says “All right, as much as anything

makes sense any more” which seems a bit dark but also somehow

appropriate, and then referring to my copy of Vanity Fair

tells the checkout girl that the big Royal Wedding

is this Saturday and that the bride is 36 and who even knows if she can HAVE

kids, she’s been married before you know;

The checkout girl who is maybe mid-thirties

yawns and asks me if I know that I selected some organic bananas, I say yes,

I want them tomorrow and they were the only ripe ones,

and then she also clucks disapprovingly, either sorry

that they did not have non-organic ripe bananas to offer me or maybe sorry

that I am the type of person who cannot wait for bananas to ripen;

Outside the old man with a service dog

who looks like a floor mop and would do a credible job at it

asks me where I’m from, and I say where,

and he says that traffic in Green Bay

is terrible, he knows because he goes to church down there every Sunday,

taking his life in his hands, practically,

I say “Ah, the roundabouts,” knowingly, but he says no,

the drivers down there are terrible tailgaters, all in a hurry, and for what?

And peering in as I put away the iced tea and bottles of water

asks me what kind of dog I have, growling in the back seat

at his mop, and I say, and add,”He’s not really friendly,” and then

he too is disappointed, and calls to the friendly dog Brice or Bryce

and they amble off into the spring green grass, where

Bryce or Brice dutifully poops; but after the man goes to find a baggie,

he can’t find where the tiny poop is and when I leave

he is still walking in a circle, searching for the pile. But what I

am thinking about is how I’ve disappointed them all, and the way the woman

put my turnovers at the bottom of the paper bag and said,

“as much as anything makes sense anymore,” maybe referring to

lava breaking through the crust of the earth or the president of the USA

paying hush money to a woman they call Stormy,

or more likely something to do with her children, who don’t call,

or Piggly Wiggly’s schedule for the weekend,

rather than heroin leaving a wide path of destruction across the American cornfields,

and meanwhile I, privileged and having all advantages,

unfairly, undeservedly, drive with a dog and bikes

and cheese and chips to a place where the sun makes a wide and slow arc over the river,

shooting sunlight like glass marbles down the its path

and the sky turns the clouds pink, lavender, yellow, by turn

and a silver fish flashes in the shallows and then darts like guilt into the deep

and I turn to ascend the stairs, going up, and up, and up.

One For the Road

June 22, 2017

I am drunk on this new summer twilight, the world’s

wash is golden-hued burdens liberally poured, and so

I will roll in the fields where the corn is laid out in straight, sober lines, the light

Creeping between them like water rising slow –

I will lick the tree trunks and the underside of leaves garnished gold and pale yellow

And swallow it all down like whiskey, burning

I will dive between the slats of the hollow barns, catch the shining insects

In my teeth and crunch them like butterscotch beetles on the wing;

I will have another and yet another from my friend Sonny the bartender,

Who doles another round from the cumulus bar itself changing dreamily from an anvil tinged in pink

To the head of an armored dragon, trailing lazy smoke, and

I will pluck the sun drenched stones along the bowls of fields and roll them over my tongue and

Flick them back into the world I will tip

the cloud-dappled sky back and have it with my eyes, poring over its every curve,

My winter-cauled eyes desperate for the magic hours of long summer days, greedy for

The swollen clouds parting along a line of trees turned silhouettes;

I will not pay my tab before leaving, I will swagger and stagger out

Of this place, holding on to the backs of polished wooden fenceposts

Navigating the perils of this world with one eye closed to time, as it reels in its orbit –

Belly full of light, burping up slivers of afternoon

I will wander down the lane, I will find my way, shaking bits of fading light

Out of my hair, wiping it from my mouth, brushing it off of my clothes,

Tracking it in crumbling pieces across the kitchen floor on my way to my spinning bed

Where I will slowly sober up and fall down

into darker and darker sleep

until the darkest sleep comes for me;

While outside, fireflies wink and dive,

threading the night with lonely stitches of light,

hitching close the wounds made but not yet felt

in the fabric of the new summer night.

Everything About this Bike Ride Tells Me I am Going to Die

June 13, 2017

This deep June evening with the sun pulling away from the sky

Sinking into the earth, its journey more than half gone, like mine –

This soft gold light finds a way through the blossoming dogwood,

Lights up the slats on the barn with gossamer gold, makes beautiful

The old;

This bluebird dead on the road, a bright blue period at the end

Of an unspoken sentence; above it five sparrows divebomb a crow –

The living going on with the business of living, defending, taking –

Without time for editing; only the dead can afford to punctuate;

This telephone pole that throws a shadow cross on the wooden slats,

This emptiness of the barns, wagon wheels inert against the silos,

The vines softening the doorframes, the barn stones put together

A hundred years ago by men and women who lived, once;

All these tell me that I will die, and soon;

And yet my heart sings the fierce green fields, the soft gold sun, the sweet Irises

Growing wild in the ditches, smelling for all the world like frosting

On a birthday cake; my heart swells like the waxing moon – and the five lines of the

Telephone wires draw the empty measures in perfect time, mile upon mile upon mile,

waiting for the notes

to come.

Fine Ruin (Bicycles in Munich)

September 30, 2016

I.

What happens

To the bicycles in Munich;

The ones punctuating the cobblestone paths –

Locked to the bike racks, lampposts, street signs

In sun, rain, sleet, snow, heat

Wheels bent into parentheses,

Or missing entirely,

Or outwardly fine,

Frames rusted, scratched, or gleaming,

Just

Forgotten about entirely

locked up and misremembered

rented and abandoned at the stair skirting of the Hauptbahnhof

Or maybe the rider shortly after the penultimate click of the lock

Struck by a bus or a train or a taxi,

felled by a quietly faulty heart ,

pierced by a knife in a lovers’ quarrel,

The chained bicycle a marker, a memo, a clue, the very last thing before.

What happens to them?

Does the orderly Munich Municipality

Sweep through with lock breakers, breaking free

Those bikes that have been stationary for a week, a month, a year –

Off to auction, to the junkyard, to repair shops, to nowhere?

Or do they just silently break down, unclaimed

As the seasons ebb and flow

and the years pile up against the stones, unswept

while other bikes come and go, come and go;

do they just

Fade, fade against the dying of the light?

II.

In Munich for Oktoberfest,

I am curious to see whether I still am who

I thought I was, even though I am

Halfway to 90,

(A new post to which to chain myself);

But meanwhile

My youth wandered off,

Having forgotten about me ;

Though I am if not beautiful, willowy, tall, then

Handsome enough,

And strong,

Enough for some fine young German men

And men from around the world

to stop; and if they stop then perhaps

I catch them with my cleverness,

And my practiced nonchalance,

Especially if it is dark

And especially if they are

Drunk.

III.

Surely, my youth cannot leave me here

with these adamantine silver chains,

But it does, and what’s more walks away without

A backwards glance

With its hair untouched by gray

And heart uncrushed by the unknowable, menacing future,

And mind and memory with more room to go than has gone before

I

Almost don’t begrudge it but

the cold metal chain lies close and heavy and loose,

like apathy or an afterthought

And I feel myself bending ,

And the slow, certain spread of rust

Like fine lace, some predatory and fibrous ossification,

choking algae on a placid lake,

whispers of ruin when the glass is half full

And I know that no one will come by to break the locks,

And I know what happens to us all.

Dark Rides

March 1, 2016

Dark spreads like blood pooling beneath the bruised skin, but warm –

Or as though the earth is an eye, lids closing slowly and shadowing inward,

And in this swelling night, in this place slowly cooling to the touch,

The air compressor blasts and growls, channeling breath into the long-resting tires,

So they may ride a little longer, though they hiss and squeal;

Cacti stand vigil in the Arizona landscaped yards, or recline passive,

Rows of inanimate thorny paddles, Mickey Mouse ears, teardrops;

From the lawn chair she hears the crickets counting time in the purpling air,

Asphalt throws the heat of the day back into the moonlit sky,

caught now and then by the smooth belly of a lizard;

All curtains drawn, all garage doors shut like tombs but this one,

the night gathers in the folds of the driveway apron, but I take one of the bikes

and my middle aged self, and ride down the middle of the smooth, deserted road, the moon enough –

Turning, watching the ranch houses with their windowed eyes shut tight,

Not a breath to fog the mirror on the handlebars,

Not a penny to hold fast the eyes;

I ride on borrowed air, slowly, weaving life into the still night,

Standing on the pedals, saving the old-lady cushioned seat, grudging bouncy tires slow and thoughtful,

Thinking about nothing, thinking about riding on though I know I will turn back into that driveway,

will swing one leg over the bike and stand on one pedal before jumping off,

will check again the skittering pulse of the night,

will smooth the sheet of wan moonlight across her lap,

will turn the fevered wind into a deep breath

while the night’s black fingers crawl westerly across the Rocky mountains,

bleeding dark across the vast and deep Pacific ocean,

racing around again before long toward the Midwest

and our empty beds.