Banana Seat

Greg straddles the Banana Seat

Suzy is pressed against the Sissy Bar

I squeeze into the Butterfly handle bars

We rode into the plum scented early evening

Far and Fast we screamed and ranged

Away from our homes

And all the attendant problems

Fearless, sailing past orchards and

Japanese green houses, skimming around

Elementary schools with cement play yards,

Teasing mysterious homes occupied by

Earthbound Ghosts of World War I

It all made sense

Way before the Treaty of Versailles

We children had made peace with our world

Lived in it completely 

and accepted all its weirding ways 

Whoosh

Whoosh – the peloton rounds the curve to the left

the air opening and closing around the group of cyclists

like a huge flock of birds or a school of small fish

all turn at the same moment

then whoosh, whoosh, single riders  

two lost souls struggle to catch up

I stand and watch

an astronomer peering at some distant galaxy

trying to make sense of it all.

Penny Farthing

 

These two sides exist encased in each other
Don't ever take one more serious than the other
To always have a smile is false and belies the truth
Remember: Buddha is an ideal not a man and he too trod dark paths

Why this fear of the dark? This fear of the light?
Both are human — both are God given — both have a place on earth

My brother tells me every face I see is my own!
We are merely reflections of each other
He channels all the light to cover his dark
The police know where He lives and visit with firm reprimands

As He climbs his high wheeled Penny Farthing
Dons his Out of Africa Hat — He pedals firmly away
Without even a glance over his shoulder
Where behind him stand The Women .... Disturbed and Devastated
Left to sweep all his Sub-Rosa Dark
under a carpet of Frail Gossamer Light
With the forgetting wind at his face He smiles and rides on