It was the steepest hill
Ever I knew.

Named for my great, great
Grandparents,
The Lords,
She was family,
Especially when snow fell in winter.
Not only neighborhood kids,
Adults too sled her.
Such was her reputation
That we had to endure the arrival of
An occasional station wagon
Full of thrill seeking townies
With their shiny, new
Department store sleds.

She refused to don an asphalt coat
That steep she was.
Coats of gravel just pooled at her feet
So steep she was.

One sunny, summer day
Cousin Mel and I stood
High upon her summit.
His legs straddled my beloved
Three speed bike
Fully equipped with hand brakes,
Narrow rims,
And leather saddle.

I gripped the bare steel bars
Of an old wreck borrowed.
No brakes? said I.
No brakes! we shouted to seal the deal.
Even in the foolish loose life of youth
I was an all in kind of guy.

Oh we flew!
Flesh and steel as one,
We flew!

In my young life,
Not in a car,
It was the fastest I had ever moved,
……For twenty seconds.

It was pure joy,
……For twenty seconds.

Then her feet of pooled gravel
Seized my front wheel and
Shook it the way my dog Lucy
Killed garter snakes,
Seizing tails in her mouth
And whipsawing the creatures with
Shakes of her head so violent
Their heads parted bodies.

Time stopped.
I lay dead.
Is not complete cessation of breath
……Death?

At last time did return,
Kept measure of
My drumming pain.

So as well did breath return,
Shallow, weak and wanting,
Unable yet to loose a scream.

My sight returned,
First black, then grey,
Then technicolor.
I saw Mel’s face so
White with fright.

Awareness returned,
As did feeling in my
Skewed and skewered limbs,
All atingle and in tangles
In my bier of broken brambles.

Movement returned,
Mel gave me a hand,
Tugging at my body,
Helping me to stand.
It seemed to take forever,
Even working together,
To free that stupid bike.

I lifted up my t-shirt,
Pulled it free
Of blood and dirt.
Those bare steel bars
With a slash made a ****,
Ripping flesh from my chest
Clear down to my belly.

We walked.
My front wheel was as strangely twisted as
My fifth grade school teacher
Who liked to push a hand down the back of my pants.

Strolling our steel steeds homeward,
Passing neighbor’s porches,
I was seized by a sense of surreal dread.
I saw one woman press hands to her head.
One mother jumped
Clear out of her seat,
Her mouth fell gaping,
Her gossip fell silent
Down at her feet.

My own mother ran into the street,
Seized me roughly by both arms,
Panic poured stinking from her pores
Like the sweat of one gripped
In the throes of malaria.

Even I was startled by my first look in a mirror.
It was clear I entered those vines headfirst,
Encountered numerous thorns,
Which tore a multitude of cuts
All about my face and scalp,
Areas rich in capillaries whose
Only purpose seems to be to bleed,
Then maybe bleed some more.
There had been enough red rivulets
That one could be excused for thinking
I had somehow survived
An **** of bloodletting.

But dang, my belly sure hurt!

More bicycles here

than houses, that makes sense, but --


where are the people?

Tree leaves are green,
With bark brown like cigar paper.
Or at least they were,
Back in the 1920's.

Oh boy it's hot in here!
The planet is starting to sizzle,
Quick, ban gas!
Better ride my bicycle to places now.

We the people,
Might be *******.
Maybe we can be saved,
If we give our money up to Musk,
Electric cars are going to save the planet!
Well we're gonna need more fuel than that,
To ***** wind turbines to replace coal furnaces.

What is math?
Or, what is understanding math?
It is a process of working with establishing information, which is much like finding the keys of a piano when blind.
Once the key is played, I remember, however faintly, the steps I needed to find the key.
When there are many ways this key is found, it becomes trivial like learning to ride a bicycle or learning to walk.
Thus, math understanding truly is a way of making truth less meaningful, almost insignificant.
Thus, a branch of knowledge loses its glory, its child-like wonder.
How few of us ride a bicycle  today out of fascination for the ride?
Yet, just as BMX stars compete globally, so too must a creative mind find tools which will allow me to create.
Is math doomed to fate, or will I resurrect it in creative destiny?

I hate bicycles.

I hate repairing bicycles.

I hate replacing bicycle tires.

I hate dismounting bicycle tires.

I hate mounting bicycle tires.

I hate inflating bicycle tires.

I hate barking my knuckles when the wrench slips.

I hate scraping my knuckles when the wrench doesn’t slip.

I hate the fire ants on whose mound I inadvertently sat while repairing the bicycle.

I hate fire ant bites.

I hate bicycles.

Listening to the radio while repairing, replacing dismounting, mounting, inflating, barking, and scraping is fun, though.

Losing you was like shedding the extra fat off my belly;
I loved it, maybe, too much.

Now I stand tall, thin and gaunt.
Push me over and I may fall over.

Share with me, your story,
Allegories of time times you spent

alone and vulnerable in a single moment,
small as a raisin, large as a glacier.

Forget about me, as you live out your journey
through song and Calligraphy.

You belch and I wipe off the *****
from your chin. Silly me, you say.

Take this blade, cut away the fragile hairs
from my forearm. Let me go,

like a mother unwrapping her fingers
around her baby boy's shoulders

so that he can ride his blue bicycle
and pedal off into the distant sunset.

The light is growing,
and we are smiling.

In a museum, or forgotten barn,
A small red twelve inch two wheeler
Hangs on invisible wires,
Or is covered in pigeon droppings and dust.
But Tannehill rode it once,
Like something in a dream.
He was too long-framed for it.
He controlled it, rounded the corner,
Pedalling hard down the sidewalk,
Across the street from our new house.
I gawked from the front yard:
He was a boy with his bike,
Like The ****** on T.V.
It was the first I learned to ride,
And the falls were magnificient,
On grass or asphalt.
Girls' bikes were easy,
One size fits all.
Then I learned to pedal
Beneath the cross bar of the big boys'.
Push the pedals,
Shift the midrift, and be gone.
Always from somewhere
To somewhere else,
Far from the soft front lawn.

Setting out, Sun reflects his light through trees bare of leaves, their limbs cast shadows on the road, like veins made visible they lay across the land connecting everything…shift.

Ahead, eyes focused forward, the larger picture is laid before me, the details in the distance dance out of bounds, only becoming clear when they wish for me to know them…shift.

Standing tall, rising to heed the call of the climb, I feel my breath and hear the beat of my heart keeping time with the turning of my feet. Adversity rides with me, he questions my confidence and fortitude without seeing I have made it this far before…shift.

Flying, only downward rather than up. My legs quickly turn, refreshed from the release of tension. The howling in my ears mixed with the rush of speed assures me I am alive…shift.

The winds refuse to ease, and they remind me of their promise to make me stronger. My body is slow, but steady is the rhythm, and my acceptance of the challenge rewards me…shift.

Behind me now is all that has been achieved. Turning home, Sun warms my shoulders as birds dart from bush to branch, asking me to stay. Shadows grow long while lingering clouds disappear giving way to Moon, her face pale in the hours before twilight…shift.

Out here, I am offered perspective. Beautifully, nature eases the effort of riding through life, shifting gears.

The pile of pine burned with ferocity
While fields of watermellon wore green in generosity

Jerimiah delivered rows of assiduous thoughts
Fertilized in decisions made years ago

Margaret was from Huntsville , working on a divinity degree
She was small , rode a bicycle , studying infinity
Timid , not unlike a titmouse in spring
Margaret had a sister named Judy

Jerimiah left for the mountains of Colorado
He took only his last name Johnson
He spent winters hibernating with the bears
He learned to have no fear and grew a long beard

Tennennessee is in Alabama , just south of Huntsville

A snowslide almost buried Jerimiah

Margaret moved to North Carolina
got married and that's all I know

Jerimiah made tracts in the snow . . . go
He sat above the devide looking down
Sometimes west when the sun went down
But mostly east under the full moon
Howling so forlornly the wolves cry

Margaret looks west every night
Then sheds one tear

The bicycles were a forged parent-permission slip
But well-forged.
I lifted myself over the tear in the truck's seat cover, not sliding
Not perforating further for today.

The road was short, short enough to have ridden the bicycles from first start to real start.
But that would not have been exotic
Connection is exotic, and channels must be followed through an antfarm
Proper etiquette must be observed with touch-me-nots

The bicycles were easier to lift from the bed with two
I gave him that, passing a front end, and jammed the wheelspokes with a jabbed finger
So that the damp spinning would not flick his face with groundwater
I expected it to hurt. My expectation tapped lightly.

That narrow pock-marked blacktop was my windtunnel
The air stroked its thumbs over my eyelids and I ached to push, breathe, push further
He held me back with his slow handlebars,
His slow kickstand clicking.

Pedaling slowly is more difficult than flying.
One finds gladness in choosing leaves to crunch with an inch-wide tire
And high-fiving low-hanging branches is socially satisfying.
He smiles behind the white mustache, and I don't mind.