Life on a bike—a whole life

Hanging in gorged-out, bulging

Rucksacks and browned grocery bags,

Both handles balanced—three bags apiece—

Keeping you upright and mobile.

You direct yourself past swiftly moving traffic,

Rich in your own exertion, your eyes-forward determination.

I do not see your eyes, but to me,

They are blue—blue, green, gray,

Many shades that depend upon

The light or night.

Your skin looks taut and red;

You have been browned, too, by

The very days you spend

Outside and alone,

Astride roads or grassy patches,

Beneath the hover of clouds

And constellations you might know by name,

By heart.

Your hair clings,

And your clothes are torn and very much worn,

Not sheltered by a closet door,

A coffin for your daily uniform.

No, you are an inside-out sort of person,

Whether by choice or chance,

Whether by Spirit or God or a Source unnamed.

You wear your bones like skin;

I can only bear to see you

When I’m passing, from the

Comforts of my express train,

Though I still feel the strain of my seat

Nudging at my limbs.

You alone are my greatest fear—

A person with nowhere to go,

No box to place his belongings in,

No quiet-safe space to hide and tuck away his cries in,

No home to nestle his tired body within.

You are caked in nature,

Carrying the remains of your age on a wobbly bike.

I am washed clean,

Chauffeur to protein powder and pots of tiramisu.

Should I offer you one?

Or would you scoff, tell me

My money is better spent elsewhere,

On plane tickets to Mars or Marseilles?

Would you smile, and relieve me of my guilt,

For an hour or three?

Tiramisu makes for poor company when you’re riding a bike to nowhere.

Maybe company is a royal we;

You are simply me, and I, you.

We are both dreamy dreamers,

Bundled in sunsets, gripping buckets of starry stew,

Our bodies nourished by the now,

Where fear must find us gliding on through.

I can see in you that there is an end,

A death to the fear that is here.

Death is a slow-growing smile—

The feeling that I, too,

Am flowing nowhere,

That I, too, have no true home

At which I can point and say,

“This is mine,”

And slip inside.

I am afraid that all I can do is accept our togetherness:

We are following the same nowhere road;

We are souls who became human;

We have both been determined by me to be divine.