Bicycle Eyes

Dusk now. Cicadas sound off in the trees on the hill outside the north window above my desk. A rising sound, like the engine of a push mower starting, running, dying. There’s repetition here. The song that continues. The calling to the world.

Somewhere behind me, out the east window, a robin stutters. The same five syllables spoken into the fading light.

Next rises a ruckus from the ground, insects that sing with their legs.

And beyond the picture window to the west flashes the signal light of a firefly at the edge of the cornfield.

This isn’t what I planned to write. But, in the end, it’s essential.

I stop. Grabbing a couple of cookies from the house and a second drink. Listening to Billy Joel’s Scenes from an Italian Restaurant. Trying to understand bits and pieces of a day almost past. When I return to these words, there is nothing but blackness outside my windows. And, I am glad.

I’ve grown fond of the night, when I can calmly stare at what can’t be seen, as if the whole world has disappeared, except for insects cloaked on their side of the earth, while some far edge stares at the sun. Yet, the constant drone of traffic on the interstate and an occasional vehicle down the Pike remind me mankind still exists.

Xero now sleeps in the window above my desk, the slight nodding of his head and twitching of his legs an indication he hears not the tree frog a stone’s throw away, but some subconscious symphony. He has the look of complete contentment. I believe he’s glad I’m here, that he can rest peacefully because of my presence.

I’ve not been here a lot lately. All too often the time spent in this place seems lost, as if I’ve been dropped in the cornfield across the road, spun in a circle and told to find my way home, green stalks before me and blue sky above no indication of which direction to walk.

This evening the way was clear. But that was another place.

I stood at a line painted in an arc. I waited for the sound of a gun. I ran. Four times I returned to the place where I began. Then I stopped. It was all good.

This current place, the here and now, isn’t so simple. But I am comforted by what surrounds me. Insects sing. Black bleeds off the pages of the night.

There is another story of the day. Of a fire burning. Dangerous embers I watched from a distance, glowing long into the evening that surrounds me. Amber still, at the end of the day.

I see the fire. See the day gone. See the lines I stayed between, running hard and stopping where I started.