By: James L Johnson

Pedaling non-stop since nine this morning
lunch on a rocky shore
a shallow rocky section of the Lehigh River
where a mile north
the Aquashicola Creek
offers its tribute to the greater flow.

I dip my cloth headband in cold water, tie it on
still dripping.
Without cloud
the hot blue sky stands still.

We eat apples and trail mix
on a boulder on a shoreline of mud
and river-worn stones.

A muddy basketball rolls along the river’s lip
jostled by the waters that washed it ashore
and now want it back —
until we see it isn’t a basketball
but a ball of wood
a head-shaped knot loosed from an upstream oak.

It looks to me like an early biped
stone-age bulging jaw and bulky head
eye sockets empty as any skull
a hairline crack an imagined mandible’s
imagined ancient fracture.

He’s a brute savagely fashioned
by the freeze of uncounted winters
by the cracking thaws of as many springs
pitiable thing, sunbaked skin
flaking bark with river stained eyes
like one who has been weeping a long time.

I slot two fingers in the eyeholes
hold it under water, clear the mud.
My wife reminds me leave nature to nature
but I squeeze the handbrake and ease
the fanciful artifact over the bars.

Remnants of lunch zipped in day packs
we mount up, ride out, a low-key crunching
on the cindered river path,
a passage of parallel tracks
width of a truck tire each,
and down the middle a strip of gauzy grass.

Secondhand Bikes, page two

In fifteen minutes the final sun of July
will hang directly overhead.
For miles an unchecked wild
merciful giant sycamores, maples, old oaks
canopies of shade against the burning day.

The skull knocks against the bike’s chrome bars
a rhythmic soliloquy
likely a biting rebuke of me
and my petty theft of nature.

Breezes riffle down the trail
and everything green dances.
The foaming river rushes noisily south.
The path we follow leads north.

Turning from the water we wheel
up a grassy incline
single-gear bikes a hard go
we crest the hill into a pine grove
a level stretch
an easy homeward coast.

The wannabe head of wood
still chants the cadence of his screed.
The river’s white noise chases after me
an old-time villain
twirling a whiplash mustache
the audience
hissing me from the stage.