Chicagoetry: Bike On A Tightrope

Bike on a Tightrope

Mid-summer sun almost directly
overhead makes a shadow
of telephone lines, like

a black tightrope,
right down the center
of a neighborhood alley.

Like a prism, perspective
tapering slightly upward,
this tunnel of blue-white light,

this circus of air,

welcomes the leisurely biker:
more kids, less cars, privileged
as though backstage

at an open air theater.
The alley is straight
but not flat, concave,

angling up and out from center
to channel rainwater, white concrete
patched with grey asphalt,

redolent of silver dust.

I concentrate on keeping the wheel
on the shadow line as though
biking a tightrope.

To stray is failure,
but not disaster. There is fail

but no fall. I can indulge
in false bravery!
A trick of the mind,

another means of distraction
while running errands,
momentarily free from

folly, fugues and funerals,
crushing regrets between wheel and shadow,
manufacturing fresh dust.

Trying for perfect balance,
riding the lines like
sentences in black ink

on a white page, often
two or three lines curving
and intersecting.

On either side, garages
like trailers for the circus folk,
or terracotta warriors

on eternal watch,
creating a false gauntlet,
another imaginary threat

conjured in the midst
of the all-so-real.
In control

of a make-believe world,
pretending to overcome,
all the while wondering

what the telephone lines are for
anymore.

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J.J. Tindall is the Beachwood's poet-in-residence. He welcomes your comments. Chicagoetry is an exclusive Beachwood collection-in-progress.

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