4-6-3 Poetry, published in Slow Trains.
L-W PI (DTJDYC?), published in Rock Salt Plum.
Signing My Life, published in The Ledge.
breasts make the best pillows, published in Chrysanthemum, and republished in Pontoon #9.
Pentimento, unpublished.
Farewell to Edgar, published in Slow Trains, and republished in Elysian Fields Quarterly, Issue 23:3 (Summer 2006).
In the Checkout Line, unpublished.
Styrofoam, published in The November 3rd Club (Spring 2008).
Poems © 2004-08 Michael Schein, all rights reserved.
Autumn on a Bicycle
On
the first day of Autumn,
a
chrysalis day of slanted light,
I
am drawn back to my bike,
the
sleek steel Bianchi
I
rode one-hundredth of the way
to
the moon this year,
then
abandoned in August to the spiders.
Oh,
what joy,
to
be pedaling again
into
the headlong rush
of
the September breeze,
into
bird songs
and
swirling sepia leaves,
past
sculls cutting the canal,
my
purring crank and derailleur
a
clockwork of wheels within wheels
shifting
light and dark
like
this gloaming Equinox.
A bicycle
is balance and momentum,
the
music of the spheres
distilled
in steel or aluminum.
It
requires no balance
to
ride in an automobile:
one
devours terrain
oblivious
to its texture,
to
pleasure or pain,
lusting
only for the next destination.
Perched
on my saddle,
I
am soft and observant
as
the day I was born,
calm
as in my mother’s arms.
“It’s
as easy as riding a bicycle” we say,
and
it is easy, this gentle machine,
the
most efficient way to transmit
our
small strength into motion.
With
ninety-nine more such autumns
and
the solar wind pressing me forward,
I
believe I could pedal to the moon,