The bottom of the world is gold, and the world is upside down.
—Sal Paradise
Oh, heretics of sidewalks!
Bikes smear the grammar
of straight lines. Handlebars
Skew mambo-limber.
Oily chains purr beatific hexes:
Let’s ride from Chi-town to Italy!
Like SUV-trapped little
Shits, the rider pretends
She’s Galileo, breaks free
From brickcold gravity
And mortar, speaks in tongues
As the wind wills itself holy.
Bikes are time travelers,
Magnanimous Pooh-Bahs
Of free time, wayward
Rolling stock, equal
Opportunity gadflies
Of slowpokes and cabbies.
Nothing steals summer
And returns it next year
Like a bike, rehearsing
The realpolitik of skin’t knees,
free-spirited dandelions,
rusty nails, and crabgrass.
Renoir Gaither believes he is very much a man in the world of artifice and among people, anything but artifice, to borrow loosely from Shakespeare’s Henry IV. He’s published previously in South Florida Poetry Journal, Washington Square Review, and Lucky Jefferson.
Interested in submitting to the 365 Collection? Complete your submission here during the last two weeks of National Poetry Month.