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CYCLING MOUNTAINS ON AN AUTUMN DAY

The weather begins to sting.
I push my blood up to ramming speed
to crack the air that waxes against me,
trails me like flame.
The crazed asphalt jimmies my bones apart.

I come to the turn-off: Summit Road.
At night, from across the city,
antennas threading the dark
with their red announcing eyes
spear this gently curving upthrust.
Now no fixed red stars to guide,

no soft slope on the horizon,
just a road
cruelly inclined
to break thighs.
I ride; I rest, gasping; I ride.

At times, on a bend, above the trees,
the city and its cupped valley lift my eyes
and the cool cat o'nine wind flicks
the sweat dry and convinces the skin
to jump, to feel.
But the asphalt tongue swallows its destination,
licks the whole body with sweat,
this ancient one-piston engine
a day too old for service.
I ride; I rest, gasping; I ride.

But then there is an antenna,
then another, and three family cars
filled with family,
and then me.
The air lining my blood
makes my valves delight,
fills each porous room of DNA
with the frolic scent of
the world turning toward fall.
I ride no more; I sit to rest.

People behind me, looking past,
blend one sweat-scribbled cyclist
on an autumn mountaintop
into their momentary vision of
one flared unpretending earth;
and that is what I see as well,
the valley cured in sun and green,
brindled with cloud-shadow,
stippled with reflected light,
the earth's body and my body whole,
unmarred by ascension,
unmarked by regret.
But too quickly fatigue returns,
time, distance, the magnets of the usual:
I put on my helmet and descend.
I push back against the air pushing me,
my body an antenna thrust up into the dark
filling with unheard but traveling messages,
a body no lighter for the effort,
no heavier for the gain,
cindered yet full of hymns,
the right leg named yes,
the left leg named I will,
pumping endlessly to get me home.

Learn more about this author, Michael Bettencourt.
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