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On the Bike Path, Riding Home
These college kids crowding the gravelled path
were learning the ropes in grade school
the day I drove over Bascom Hill
through clumps of students jaywalking
down Observatory Drive. Sun-flecked whitecaps
darted the lake, blackbirds buzzed the cattails,
and I, drained by ping-pong months of chemo
and radiation, gripped the steering wheel,
fighting the urge to mow down ranks of adolescents,
teach them all a quick lesson in mortality.
These years later, I bike past the lakeshore dorms,
set against green-again Bascom Hill--wheels spinning,
but not too fast--when movement flickers at the corner
of my eye. A coed's sudden gasp; her boyfriend's gruff
Shee-it; and I know: the chipmunk has skittered between
the wheels of my moving bike, dodged under the pedals
in its mad dash for cover of woods, a feat precise
as "running in," a schoolgirl finding the rhythm
of jumprope slapping pavement, spun by the aching
arms of friends. Is survival timing, or chance?
I could never run in, myself, not even to one spinning
line, much less two lengths of jumprope flashing,
the sinuous alternate arcs an illusory bounded cage.
published in The Journal of the American Medical Association,
February 21, 2001
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