-instrument of bicycle-

there wasn’t a chain-

link fence erected could stop us

and we looked at them as invitations,

slow-riding our bikes across the weave of metal

swiveling the handlebars for balance

on the hunt for things of interest.

old man Rachlin’s junkyard was best.

he gave-up long ago, tolerating

the breach in the overhead barbed wire

cut by our predecessors and handed

down to us, their bikes

lying in wait at the gutter on Healy

behind my house, passed its grapevine,

the craggy garden of tomatoes and weeds

under the clotheslines,

then through the battered wooden fence

to the junkyard where our bikes,
same as their bikes, were laid down to wait.

the proofs are in the telling

herein of therein— the pictures to be drawn

behind the eye from what was seen.

so I go home again to look around,

pan-handling,— taking what’s mine

along with the stuff belonging to others.

I bear witness to what was witnessed

on the inside and outside of residence.
the junkyards taught us that a time will come

when things are let go, by choice, by reason,
by collision,— that there’s a reason decisions
are made at the last of moments. the bicycle

is the instrument of our explorations.

who then was to know its use was to keep
the heart beating?

we’re set upon a foundation of here and now,

our bikes rolling with purpose always being half-way there,
across the little roads connecting to our testament.