Poem "Sorrow in the Bicycle Summer"

Yesterday evening I read this poem at the King's Books reading open mike, the poem was from 1990, twenty-five years ago, my first summer with an adult bike.

SORROW IN THE BICYCLE SUMMER

When I reach the red light just down at the park

The traffic light lands me, beaches me straddling

my middle bar, until the bicycle seat becomes

a place to sit, furniture I use while my mind drifts.

At the red light I forget I am on my bicycle

And across I notice the tree that rattles

Large feathers of leaves, the spine of a feather

And leaflets beside, and in the wind

The tree from top to low limbs over the curbs

and street can shimmer.  It is a black locust.

 

And it is my bicycle summer.

Now I am a person on a bicycle.

The swallows circled round my bicycle,

In the night are they asleep

or have they left us for the winter?  It was a lawn,

and a sun that was mercifully a part of the trees.

The sun a heart the leaves crowned,

The sun a heart the leaves screened.

Now the swallows will be gone

And sorrow is for anything, for our sad tables

turned over in the park, for a mislaid towel,

Or for a theorem long forgotten from school.