Vanishing Point

Vanishing Point

  

The wind is a steady hand at my chest.

An hour to ride my bike head-first

into spring, that flimsy catkin teasing

from a maple, the thing I follow

at a lumbering, hypnotic cadence.

I push through early-morning shadows

and winter’s left-over gloom

as the sun winnows down the path.

Nothing distracts but the juncos

criss-crossing like lace unraveling.

Behind me, three miles by now,

my child busies the dust

in the hulking house, the place

where all of this began.

I long to be no longer visible, an arrow

quivering into a grove but missing

every tree, an exquisite passing.

 

Below a frost-slicked trestle,

the creek swells its green skin

with yesterday’s pollen and rain.

A fresh grave is being dug on the hill.

Skunk cabbage jaws open above

the curved rot of a lone Chinook

in the shallows. Cottonwood resin

coats the air, sweet and welcome.

From the mottled water, a mallard

pads her way up the mud bank

to a nest enfolded

by ten hues of green. So clearly

she slips into the tangle

while her mate devotedly treads

in the direction of her return.

 

Like the expected rioting

of bud to flower to fruit,

I am unable to resist the path.

The wind, now at my back,

chills my bare legs revolving out

a rhythm that will carry me homeward.

Iron-hot blood floods

its capillarious routes. Propelled,

I become that point

on the horizon slowly

coming back into view.

First published in Pilgrimage, 2007.