Sometimes a single bike leans against the landscape
- Sometimes a single bike leans against the landscape
Just outside of Eindhoven,I thought I saw a hammerhead horse.The whole scene reverberated.His head was bowed as hegrazed in front of a house withindigo shutters. A blue so blueit was not blue.This may have been a birth control visionwhich these days has mefeeling like a magician floating on awormwood NuvaRing®.Every scene's made of pure sound.I've never felt so centeredon my cervix.
A moment ago a seagullrowed his first few feet of air—or,meters, to be fair—and I spoke to him.Without a moving train, I said,we're all dead limbs, winter maples,slow chewing Holsteinsnodding off while standing up.The winter's no time to be roofing,wouldn't you agree?
Somewhere a young goatstands in a side yard.He's listening to the gears in the wheels.
The Netherlands is a country of piles,like the broken branches heaped next to [End Page 84] the canal after yesterday's windstorm,a mess of crates in the factory yard next tostacks of pipes, next to spotted sheep I've never seen before.Speaking of piles, now an arch bridge on pilings,then steel joists stackedoutside of Houten Castellum.There are tarped piles weighted downwith tires, and elsewhere, my pajama moundshed onto the floor as though I've been raptured.
Is it possible I just sawa herd of buffalo the size of goats?
Inside this spoorwagon's a living movie.I'm talking to the sun long distance:We are nowhere nearthe ocean here, where are you?Next thing I knowI'm in the grief again,the gray frames-in the window andI'm looking myself in the resting-bitch-face,this speed a running personified.
The fog turns to cloud and the gulls spinpsychedelic eddies out from their wings.
All along the railroad tracks, trees punctuate the path.winter oak, then oak, ook oak, then break:the residue of windopens out a burst eardrum.
Semis crawl the middle distance.
The canals are the color of illumined absinthe,the color of after a storm.The sight of toy ponies is a specific kind of pleasure(you'll have to trust me) [End Page 85]
as is a solitary bikeleaned against a hedgewith no one in sight,or a single crowcrowningthe top of a bare tree. [End Page 86]
Laura Wetherington's newest book, chosen by Peter Gizzi for the New Measure Prize, is forthcoming from Free Verse Editions in 2020. Her first book, A Map Predetermined and Chance, was selected by C.S. Giscombe for the National Poetry Series. She also has a chapbook with Bateau Press, chosen by Arielle Greenberg for the Keel Hybrid Competition. A teacher in SNC Tahoe's MFA Program, Laura's also a feature writer for the University of Arizona Poetry Center, a reviewer at Full Stop, and the poetry editor at Baobab Press.
