Philomath, Oregon (1946)

The first woman I wanted was a bike and I saved to get one.
I didn't care about color or size, just a bike to ride on.
The Christmas it arrived, there was rain and I went to ride
with a jacket thrown over PJ's.  It was not yet light
and the planking of sidewalks was wet. Where sidewalks met
at the corner of streets, street lights shone.  I rode alone
out of calling, beyond breakfast and lunch, and did not come in
until I was wet to the skin and was hunched with cold. 
This event is told by a cyclist who treasures your body
and is old enough to by-pass breakfast and lunch  
and to keep on riding; content, not obsessive, convinced
that the Christmas tidings are a promise that has yet to be kept
and is sick of snow and the cycles of freezing and thawing  
and the cracks that grow with time in asphalt and ceiling.  

I am warned I can, but should not accept as plain fact
or dismiss as dream what in telling has proved quite exact:
that it was my wanting the hills and curves of your body
that drew me back to track the long road to myself
and not the flaunting of speed or endurance or skill.

It is something given, this being wanted and believed, 
the first real test of nothing I needed to achieve. 
I can simply rest on the worth of my years, roads I’ve taken
by accident and sometimes request on my way to heaven.