BICYCLING HOME AT DUSK I CLOSED MY EYES & LET GO & SAW THE RABBITS by John Paul Davis
The headwind runs cool fingers
through my hair. The opal
of rain clouds & the treeline
lit up like the eyes of a woman
& I am drunk, pedaling faster
than I am dying. The divorce
getting smaller & smaller behind
me but still big enough I know
when it’s breathing. Drunk & fast,
I’m a procession of heartbeats
somewhere between where I’ve come from
& where I’m going. Long before
I met her, when I was still a child
the great bird of loneliness
came to roost in me. I didn’t want
to drink it to sleep tonight. I let go,
first my wedding hand, sinister hand,
certain hand, then the other, divorce hand,
love hand, writing hand. The frogs
purring in the creek & I close my eyes
as a way to hear everything
better. I pray
out loud because I’m the only human
creature there. I want to be a glad
man. I want to go up singing.
Forgive my hands, false
& true hands, fail & try hands
that each release so easy
let me be an animal
that believes again
& I hear them first, urgencies
of fur over the pavement
then open my eyes & I
see the rabbits
little arcs of their leaping
taking the shape of rainbows,
& disintegrating as quickly,
dozens of them, bolts
of brown & iron light
a promenade before the quivering
of my front wheel as if to say
this is a new road, it is the same
road but it is a new road, the rabbits
the rabbits & then it is night
& they are gone & I am alone
in my humming & burning,
the stars throwing
light from before the age
of vertebrates across space at me.
I saw the rabbits. I said
amen & I am still
saying it. I go home with dust
on my ankles. The rabbits
flashed east & west
in front of my face splitting
the air into two fists of turbulence,
roads often & less taken
& this burned me, eternally
the way music can burn
& home, at the river
my bicycle fluttering
against the house
from the ride & I stand
at the kitchen door hearing
what the current & the trees
have to tell me & I am rabbit,
I am furry-souled now, I have now a heart
with the hocks & long hind
legs of a rabbit, my deepest self
long-eared & listening
I have now a way to kick & sprint,
& a way of knowing the wind
& its fickle cousin the river,
I have two new hands.
Issue 5 Contents NEXT: Two Poems by Simone Muench
