ROLLFAST

What we did that summer evening
was turn our bicycles upside-down
so the seats were on the ground
and the wheels in the air—
then we twirled the pedal round and round
till knuckles and fingers were white
and we couldn’t make out individual spokes:
just a silver blur and an incremental hum
as the wheel sang the song of its appetite.

What we did next was feed the wheel flowers,
flowers not worth putting in a crystal vase
—Trifolium, Dandelion, Queen Anne’s Lace—
flowers that thrived on parental neglect
in the unkempt grass by the utility shed
as if to affirm Britannica on weed:
any plant growing where it is not wanted.

Who would be afraid of an idle wheel that spat
out handfuls of ragtag flowers, already half dead?
And the bleeding stalks left a stinging answer
in the summer air: perfume we’d count on ever
after—to keep coming at us stronger than before.        

Lynne Saughter went first; she thrust in dandelions;
then Bruce Edwards, a single budding clover:
the only sign we’d get that his own tousled head
would test the metaphor’s might just two weeks later
when wheels would screech and metal do its work
a few miles west off Willow Pass Road.

It was starting to get dark on Mount Diablo.
We flipped our bicycles right-side-up
and raced around the cul-de-sac like maniacs,
or Dante’s damned, or Milton’s falling angels,
getting high on the last drops of Daylight Savings
until parents cried, Allee, Allee, In-Free.

Later we fell asleep thanking Schwinn,
Rollfast and whatever gods may be
for the night, the mountain and the wheel
within a wheel—like love, like magic,
like a spell to help us keep our balance,
and make up for bald tires,
as we cycle to the valley floor.

   from Counterpoint
                                        -- David Alpaugh

Hanging the Picture

We need to hang it plumb—
as if a weight dangling
from the center of the frame
would plunge straight through,
you say, a clean line
to the Earth’s core. The level helps,
yes, but the eye knows best,
sees vertical even when
walls and ceiling meet at a tilt,
when there’s no absolute
on land that shifts and splits.
The walls are skewed,
I see it now and ask you
to swing the left corner up—
the next try of the level
moves the bubble out of center,
but no matter. I look at the picture
and know that it’s trued.

  from the Northwest Cultural Council 
      Juried Exhibition, “The Look of Love,” 
      November 2007
                                        -- Amy MacLennan