I flatten the already flattened
grass
of the school field
glowing golden in the morning sun.
The matted track
I follow
shines silvery and slick,
as fast-rolling tires
wring ephemeral diamonds
from the last morsels
of dew and rainwater.
I’m enriched
by every ragged,
heart-choked gasp
that burns beneath
my ribs.
I twist the skeleton-white
steel frame of my bike
through off-camber turns,
narrowly missing
with my handlebars
the taut ribbon
that forms the labyrinthine
hallways of the cross course.
Every time I whip through,
I take a different line,
my index fingers searching
less and less
for the brake levers.
Like the slowly quieting
early morning crickets,
the squeal of brakes
has fallen mostly silent
after the initial holeshot crescendo.
The truth is
the race left me
long ago.
A few chasers behind,
most of the race sweeping
through the clockwork
of the course ahead,
I’m alone.
But this.
This is okay.
Eventually, I forget
the hard hammer strikes
of my heart.
The first desperate minutes
settle
into a dance of pedals,
an ebb and flow of effort.
I concentrate on steering
and the sunlight
that warms the dust
gathering on my forearms and face.
Thanks for reading today, cycopaths.
Dane Hamann is the author of today’s poem. He told me it’s “about my first cyclocross race (and first SS race experience) at the race age of 41.”
He edits and indexes textbooks for a publisher in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. He is the poet-in-residence for derailleur.net and the author of A Thistle Stuck in the Throat of the Sun (Kelsay Books, 2021) and Parsing the Echoes (Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2023).
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OK. That’s all for now. Go get alone on a bike and let “the sunlight that warms the dust” gather on your forearms and face.
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