Cycles Poem by Terese Svoboda

My bike floats on a road
without a moon or light, all balance.
I open my mouth, O sole mio
but I fear I will fall

into my voice, it could be
the road, dippy and
suddenly ending.
So no sound comes out.

I just pedal, well, I breathe but—
A friend bikes out of the black.
I heard you and I hurried.
What did I sing? Our wheels

whine forward. We can't even see
the grass brushing our calves.

Soon the road narrows
and a creek cuts one side,
you can hear water
on its own path, and surely

there's a ditch—surely. We bike in file,
hunched, bearing the dark. If we slow—
A car comes up behind us,
lights off. We pedal hard, harder.

The car comes on anyway,
it is coming. Before its grill heat
signals where,
there's a terrible crash,

the late pop
of an airbag, there's the ditch
and the grass, we weave and—
There's no sound after, just a metal

something rolling.
We kickstand our bikes in the dark.
No O my god. Just What?
What? my friend, gasping.

We run back.
Someone drove that car.
If we search for it apart, we're lost,
but together, we're doubly blind.

We touch and touch.
The sharp grass, the flitter of insects,
the uneven earth underfoot—
We want not to find

anything. It is the future
we move toward,
and Death says
we will find it,

both of us, and the road
we followed,
the road the car left,
is gone.