Sep 2011
Two Bicyclists*
At Mullan and Reserve in Missoula, Montana
a bike leaned crumpled on a cop’s waxed hood
As two miles up the road an 18-wheeler
Shuddered with its engine’s throbs
Hitching in the driver’s chest, his head
in his hands, “The rider is dead.”
Driving by in rapid succession these scenes added up to an awful conclusion
Do you remember, Alexis? The way we gasped, the moment of realization,
the awful knowledge that this bicyclist had slipped beneath those rear tires
swinging out wide, his chest crushed and heart fluttering a bird’s goodbye
too late at night to be out of bed beneath those wheels, perhaps the same
Rider I’d found five years before, blind-drunk and head over handlebars
Crashed with his legs wound like bone shoelaces in the pedal and frame
the widening puddle of *****, the blood seeping from his face, his hollow
cheeks his refusal to wake, his fear of an ambulance and my slow waking
to the fact he didn’t want police because he was higher than God.
Screamed in his ear time and again, as if even if he’d died I could bring him back
through my sheer desperation; as if I could stave off inevitability with will; as if
any one of us could hope to battle God, the end, the fragile frames of bone and
bicycle ****** beneath this parade of wheels. No. No. No. But yes, he did wake
slurring “No” to the ambulance, “No” to the whole scene, as if
His denial could act as time machine, he could fight against the present just
by wishing for the past, wishing hard enough. And I know the feeling, I know
it well, every hangover day praying to the Santa Claus god “I’ll do better,
I swear.” This wishing gets us nowhere, but it’s easy to philosophize when
it’s someone else’s ribs cracking. Oh, wasted bird, fly away home.
Ross Robbins
September 2011
At Mullan and Reserve in Missoula, Montana
a bike leaned crumpled on a cop’s waxed hood
As two miles up the road an 18-wheeler
Shuddered with its engine’s throbs
Hitching in the driver’s chest, his head
in his hands, “The rider is dead.”
Driving by in rapid succession these scenes added up to an awful conclusion
Do you remember, Alexis? The way we gasped, the moment of realization,
the awful knowledge that this bicyclist had slipped beneath those rear tires
swinging out wide, his chest crushed and heart fluttering a bird’s goodbye
too late at night to be out of bed beneath those wheels, perhaps the same
Rider I’d found five years before, blind-drunk and head over handlebars
Crashed with his legs wound like bone shoelaces in the pedal and frame
the widening puddle of *****, the blood seeping from his face, his hollow
cheeks his refusal to wake, his fear of an ambulance and my slow waking
to the fact he didn’t want police because he was higher than God.
Screamed in his ear time and again, as if even if he’d died I could bring him back
through my sheer desperation; as if I could stave off inevitability with will; as if
any one of us could hope to battle God, the end, the fragile frames of bone and
bicycle ****** beneath this parade of wheels. No. No. No. But yes, he did wake
slurring “No” to the ambulance, “No” to the whole scene, as if
His denial could act as time machine, he could fight against the present just
by wishing for the past, wishing hard enough. And I know the feeling, I know
it well, every hangover day praying to the Santa Claus god “I’ll do better,
I swear.” This wishing gets us nowhere, but it’s easy to philosophize when
it’s someone else’s ribs cracking. Oh, wasted bird, fly away home.
Ross Robbins
September 2011
