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2010-06-28 - 4:46 p.m.

My bike got stolen while I was sitting in a courtroom, not getting picked for an attempted-murder-charge jury, and so now I need a new one. We've got choices at the supermarket, in beer, and in bikes. There are many kinds of bikes and I have to admit, I'm feeling a strong urge to get it totally right this time. I want to get a bike that I like to look at, that I like to ride, that I can throw into the bed of my truck with one hand, if I had to. I'm narrowing it down. I'd hate to grab one and then figure out there was another one I liked better. I suppose you could have that feeling about quite a few things.

Also, and I don't know why this is, but most of the racing-bike clothes and stuff--the shirts, the shorts, the sunglasses, the hats--is just awful. Who wants to look like that, wearing those tight shirts with the loud colors? Does anyone like the way that stuff looks, or do people just put up with it because that's how it is? And helmets, too. Why do bike helmets look like that, swooped back and pink and purple and white and silver, all mashed up? I wish it didn't fire me up. I don't like to rant about things, usually, but bike gear gives me the business.

Reading Mary Oliver poems now. I mean, motherfucker. What a wallop those little things pack. Her poems are like little turnovers filled with dark, intense jams. So easy to eat, and so simple, but they get to you. The poems "Peonies" and "Whelks" just about knocked me out. They're both about death.

In "Peonies", she talks about the fleetingness, the quick beauty of the flowers, and then:

"Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?"

Terror beneath the grass, huh? Well, sure, Mary Oliver, and thanks for the dark dreams. But I read it three times a month ago, and twice again yesterday and then again today.

You know, sometimes I'm sad, because I get the feeling that I was somehow promised poetry. I'm talking here about poetry in all its forms, not just actual poetry. And then I read something like this little thing about flowers and how the flowers spark this kind of reaction and I realize that maybe it's up to me to go out and get that poetry after all.

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