by Adriana Alcala

 

i.

There is something about puncturing the tight and airy bubble of your own sadness
with a bike ride that pumps me like a rubber tire full of melancholy this Sunday evening-
One which I pump over pathetic hills to strange observations:

Like
the trees, Pine and Cypress, in their sunset orange robes
speak to me,
but all they say is
goodbye.

Or
how stone birdbaths, in their backyard solitude,
just exude such a nostalgic sadness it nearly chokes me.
I know the birds prefer to bathe in dust.

And
how great these sidewalks and trails are for
dogwalkers and saddened bicyclists, like myself.
Near endless lush green lawns I am beckoned to collapse and write poems under the August sky.
I cry as I push the wheel.

ii.

I can’t say what this feeling is inside of me,
but the brown cow in the stable and I locked eyes and I think she knows;
Her eyes were the same as my mother’s when she heard my fearful confession
of desire
that, perhaps without knowing, she alchemized into being.

These quiet thoughts lingering in the corners of my own soul
are secrets that the Great Egret skirting at the edge of
the suburban-run-off pond could sense
as I watched her from the boardwalk,
under cover of ducktails and plumeless thistle.

She moves with grace through the world;
The world that feels shattered, only to me.
To her, this is not the world,
this is just water. She doesn’t hold every broken thing
or mistake, or desire.
She only heeds the sound of her own animal heart and takes
wing.

 

 

***

Adriana Alcala is an artist and writer who has called Tree Town home for 7 years. The inspiration for this poem comes from a recent bike ride Adriana took because movement is medicine, and summer is ending, and with it, their time in Ann Arbor comes to a close as they prepare to move across the country to Oregon.

***

This is an original poem, brought to you by Poet Tree Town, an Ann Arbor-based poetry-in-public initiative and celebration of local Washtenaw poets. Find out more about Poet Tree Town on Instagram and Facebook, or say hello at poettreetowna2@gmail.com.