Docked

The day is soft and warm, and it calls to me this morning.

Last night I rode the sun down with my lover through the sticky, wet clay and cloying green grasses of her first mountain bike ride. We heard the train rush by after crossing the tracks and I felt anxious, and jealous of the conductor. We turned around then, so as not to get caught in the dark, and slip-slopped our way back up the hill to the car. After a shower, and a walk of the little dog we stayed up too late.

I have been a lot places.

I once rode the E line from Queens to Manhattan outside, between cars in February, my feet slipping on the corrugated stainless decking. I have climbed a rope 90 feet out of Big Horse Cave after 10 hours underground, to see the Northern Lights wavering beyond the sub-zero winds. The streets of Mostar, all buildings reduced to dwindling sand castles from bullets. Underneath the Burnside bridge smoking cigarettes on my bike watching the skaters grind coping and smoke cocaine. I spent the night on a paper map in North Carolina, stranded on the trail at dark. Drank Kalimotxo and watched the sun rise from the parapet of the Sagrada Familia. Bean Point watching a hurricane blow by in the Gulf. Overheated in Amboy. Parliament in Missoula.

My advice? Don’t come in from the cold unless you must.

Juancho