the rain on my brow is a shield
before which wind wakes whirls of dirt
and dust catches on my well-worn shoes,
soles sliced by the pedals on my bicycle,
sharpened instead of dulled by two generations of use

the arches above my head are the ribs of an umbrella
but drops cut at an angle as if the notion of striking
the ground before kissing my skin is simply too
much to consider

so under this canopy four years has stretched
into six hundred, the crash of minutes slipping away
muted by the wolves in my brain and until this pathway is
finished with me i will never know peace