Stella!

Here's my brand-new bike. It's a Raleigh, but I named her Stella. And today, I made my inaugural ride across the lake, about 17 miles each way. I've done the ride before, but not in almost two years. And definitely not with this bike, which is a definite improvement over my previous wheels. We both made it across and back. And I can still type. (Maybe not coherently, but...)

Whoa, that was fast!

Last night we went out to Marymoor Park to watch the FSA cycling races at the velodrome.

Jamie won the scratch race, and Christine and her teammate rode a gutsy race in the Madison.

Riding my bike, way behind

It's bike-to-work month and so I'm back on my bike some of the time, but a lot of the time, mostly because I am very slow and it is a long ride (17.5 miles one way).

This is supposed to save energy and make me healthier and maybe even make me thinner (it won't, though) and it's supposed to be fun. And it is fun, except for that hill, oh, and that other hill. Now I am a little short of breath.

The downside is that I have less time for reading (I can read on the bus, but not on the bike) and less time for writing (I'm spending it all on the bike, and then I'm kind of spent).

I distinctly remember riding along yesterday and having one of those delicious aha! moments. I thought, "I know what my next poem is going to be." Wonderful. But that's all I remember. What was my next poem going to be?

I could stop and jot down a note, but then it would take me even longer to get to where I'm going. It may be all about the journey, but not so much when it's the commute.

All this moaning! And you should hear me when I get off my bike at the end of the day! But seriously, if you haven't cycled in a while, use this month as an excuse. (Joannie says...) Haul the bike out of the shed or the basement. Pump up the tires. Get on and go. It'll make you feel like a happy puppy with its head out the window. It'll make you feel like a kid again.

And tonight, after my long pedal home, I'm going to go to my first letterpress class!

Yesterday at the races

Christine, in the black and yellow, moving up

Crazy kind of croweded

Jamie, in the black and red, chasing.

For the fun of it?

On my long rides into work, I've been trying hard to get the trip down to an hour and a half—one way. On Tuesday, I made it to work in 1:30 and home in 1:36 (close enough).

But this morning I realized that all this pushing has taken some of the fun out of cycling. It has become more like a job, or a goal to be reached.

I'm all for goals, but this morning, I decided to switch my goal back to having fun. A good ride means I enjoy myself—even if it takes an extra 10 minutes.

The morning ride was hard anyway, but in the afternoon, my new perspective worked. I had fun.

On the ride home, I thought about poetry and the plethora of rejections (including the one I got today). Although they come with the territory, they can get demoralizing. I write poetry because I love to write and something in me needs to write. I enjoy it.

Then there is the publishing part. Could I let go of the goal of getting published and just submit for the fun of it?

It seems so counter to our culture. And necessary. And worth trying, at least.

Bateau biking

It's Tuesday morning, and I'm getting ready to ride the long way to work. I've also spent a fair amount of time trying to talk myself out of it. So far, I'm losing the argument.

While cycling last week, I had some time to think not only about how long it takes me to get somewhere, but how I get somewhere. I am very slow on my bike, so a 35-mile roundtrip gives me plenty of time to ponder.

I have identified four kinds of cycling:

• Cruising/coasting: It's easy and you feel good.


• Pushing: Attacking a hill (or pedaling really hard on a flat or even a downhill—which I generally do not do).


• Recovering: After pushing.


• Bateau biking.

What do boats have to do with bicycles? Good question!

I've been trying to be smart about protecting my knees (now, there's a first). When I start to flag on a hill, I gear way down, so that I'm pedaling with no resistance. It's slow, but it's also kind of leisurely.

I imagine myself in some beautiful floral dress and a hat with a ribbon riding along the side of the lake. It has a feeling of boats and water and freshness and ease.

I'm grateful for any ease I can get. Even if the joggers can pass me.

Where do the words go?

Why do I write less when I bike a lot? You'd think that I'd get inspired. All of that alone time, thinking time.

The repetition of cycling round and round frees up my mind to ramble along (although it works better when I can breathe). I've always thought that this kind of activity was conducive to creative thinking. Maybe it is. Maybe the problem is that by the time I get off my bike, I'm just a pile of mush, so I'm not making the transition from thought to text.

I want to get back to the Camargue poems, but I've reached a little stall. Is it the biking, or do I just not know what to write?

What do you do when you get stuck?

And from another occasion (another poem)

The work week has started, which means I'm back to a little biking and perhaps less writing.

Is it possible that the biking pumps up the endorphins, and then I'm so blissed out that I don't need to pursue a creative outlet? That's kind of scary. Let's not go there.

My little bike poem has not progressed, but when I bike I think about writing, and I also think about my stepson Jamie, who is a big-time cyclist.

So in the spirit of biking and writing and occasional poetry, I thought I'd share a poem that I wrote years ago for his birthday, when he and his Dad were in training for the annual Seattle-to-Portland ride. (It's an old poem; Jamie's 27 now.)

Sixteen


Rubber taunts the road
as you pedal up hills, over bridges.
The first warm day in a week refuses
to loosen its grasp of the dramatic.

A gull wing flashes white
against the dark berm of watercolor cloud
you race toward
then past,

the way you passed your father
a mile back, legs pumping strong,
lungs fired with a smack of salt air.
Up ahead the sky bends pale

and you push harder
into the clear unknown.

Occasional poetry

Yesterday, while I was slogging up a long slow rise on Mercer Island, I started thinking about a bike poem—a very tongue-in-cheek type of prayer poem. I don't know whether it will work, but it must be funny (I tell you, I look pretty funny by about mile 7, with my face all red and gasping).

It's too rough still to post here—to rough even to qualify as a draft—but I started thinking about some of the other poems that I've written for special situations, special people, and special occasions.

Always, for me, there is an initial stretch of panic, followed by a dry spell and one or several starts before I'm able to find the right balance between the event or the person and what the poem itself wants to stay.

I've found that some of them work out better than others. For some of those efforts, their merit lies more in their presence as a gift than in an poetic power or craft. And sometimes they come out really strong!

But I was thinking how even if those poems don't really stand on their own after the day is done, they are written for their audience, and they reach their audience—and how often does that happen?

I've written few poems for birthdays (one that I wrote before my middle child was born—and then I saved it for 15 years) and a couple of poems for weddings. I'm posting one here, which was written for my sister's wedding:

Convocation


After a meal and a moment,
you enter the wide evening,
turn east toward lilac dusk
and the steep flights
to Hunter Boulevard.

The city unfolds below you
like a fan of watered silk
or a deck of cards.

Take a breath, deeply.

You have held your hands close,
drawing for two of a kind,
keeping an ace in your cuff.

A train’s descant, parting sorrow,
rises over Beacon Hill,
settles like thin rain,
the echoes of a saxophone.

Breathe deeply. Sing.

In the measures of music,
you meet a language
for desire and trust,
map chords or discord
to a treasured resolution.

Twilight strikes a solemn key,
matches the color of morning
and you trace the sun’s descent
into the valley, the old high school
gone rose in the day's denouement.

Take a breath. Say Yes.

It’s not the stairs you’ve counted,
but the steps ahead.
You find a pace that fits
to walk in all weather.

How about you? Do you write poems for family and friends and special occasions? How do you approach that project?

P.S. This was written as a follow-up poem to "The Fine Art of Measurement." I don't have a direct link to that poem online, but it was published in Weathered Steps (Rose Alley Press).

Flavors of rejection

(Ultimately, it's all about food.)

Miles bicycled today: 36.5

I tried two new routes, one on the way into work and one on the way back. The second route won for civility, although the ride home took me two hours because of stopping to look at my map and turning the wrong way (especially after I ran out of map). Now I am very tired and very sore and very, very relaxed.

What does this have to do with rejection?

Nothing—but I'm getting there.

Yesterday I received yet another no in the mail, and when I went to log it in my little records document, I realized that the packet had come back in barely over three weeks. Bummer--that's a pretty swift rejection, and it made me think about all the different levels and shadings of rejections that we get (yes, I'm making an assumption here). I know that tend to read things into what little information I can imagine.

• The quick rejection 1: Barely time to get to the journal or magazine and back.


• The quick rejection 2: It takes a little longer.


• The slow rejection: A year goes by.


• The nice rejection: The rejection includes a handwritten note—and sometimes encouragement.


• The brusque rejection: Your cover letter is still in the envelope (did the editors read your submission, or just see a name they didn't know and stuff it in the SASE; am I being cynical?).


• The nonrejection 1: You never hear anything.


• The nonrejection 2: Your packet comes back in a different envelope with no name and no rejection slip (okay, it's probably a rejection).


• The nonrejection 3: Your SASE comes back empty.

?

Now I am pretty certain that this would look entirely different from an editor's perspective. In fact, I bet editors have lists of their own. I'd love to hear about them.

It would also be nice to talk about flavors of acceptance—but mostly that's delicious.

A funny thing happened on the way...

This morning on my way to drop my daughter off at the bus, I noticed that the cleat on the bottom of my bike shoe was askew. I straightened it out and kept walking my bike.

After being dismissed, albeit gently, at the middle school bus stop, I got on my bike and rode two miles down the hill to my own bus connection.

But when I got to the bike rack by the Montlake Flyer stops, I couldn't unclip my shoe from the pedal. I twisted and twisted.

Nothing happened.

I thought, "Maybe if I take the shoe off, I can get a better angle." Then I was standing in the long, damp grass on one foot, with the other foot daintily clad in a sock with blue flowers, and bending over my bicycle twisting the stuck shoe.

Nothing happened.

I kept hoping that someone would say, "Do you need some help?" But no one came along—or if they did, they thought that I knew what I was doing.

Yeah.

My options:

1. I could put my shoe back on (and hope not to fall over in the process) and bike back home, put the bike in the shed, and forget all about it.


2. I could ride over to the bike store and wait for them to open (but it might be two hours).


3. I could actively solicit help.

Gingerly I rolled my bike to the sidewalk, carried it down the stairs to the highway, watched streams of people boarding my bus, and asked the much-more-together cyclists at the stop if they could help.

"Hmmm," said one of the cyclists. "You need tools."

Before I could say much of anything, he had his tools out of the bag, and then he had my shoe off the pedal.

On the way home from work, I stopped off at the bike store for a new shoe screw and some tools. Now in my bag I have bike tools (a lovely collection of hex wrenches) and poetry tools (pen, index cards, stamps, and whatever I'm currently reading).

But what does this have to do with poetry really?

I had planned to try the long ride again tomorrow—especially now that I have tools and by this afternoon my knees didn't creak quite so much. I was also trying to find good excuses to blow it off and just ride the bus. But I'm still trying to find the perfect route, and I've been turned on to a few good ideas. I want to try them out. I want to explore.

I realize that often I explore less when I'm writing. I have my "voice" most of the time, and it's comfortable. It's me. What if I could avoid that temptation? How can I explore? Really?