Thoughts Cycling Around Greenlake

The water is done sparkling for the day. It is a little colder.
The vivid green has gone to gray. His skates
swish, warning her, before the bridge, and she,
quick glance over shoulder, goes right, he left, around.
The bridge. A guy, long black hair, heavy metal T
walks on the edge. A certain random restlessness
informs this simple peace of people out and doing something—
an unknowing army of evening. Around this small drop
within the larger context of the multitudinous activity of all
there is, a contented breathing of being hovers, something like magic.
I don't believe in magic, no, not really, though I do believe in play
and power; I believe in being, breathing, transcendence and something,
something I hesitate to name, that lies beyond our senses. These
people run, skate, cycle, walk, here, a deliberate sharing of individual
experience. It is a lonely thing, but perhaps many isolated sparks
can make a fire. Is that all it takes? Accumulation breeds actualization?
But in other places, no, and here, even, there is, perhaps, conflict
brewing...a couple, unable to reconcile, walks silently side by side,
each thinking thoughts no longer to be shared, wondering what went
wrong and how to fix this if it's worth fixing,
because she knows it's not always worth fixing, even when you love him,
and he, well, nothing he's said recently even makes sense to him,
and a flicker of wonder wanders through him regarding
where in his scattered lineage this comes from, but it is gone
as quickly and they walk. A little girl on her scooter—you
don't want to know her story; this is her happy time, thinking
she can turn a circle into a path of escape—a man
sits, watching people stream past the water. It's over.
How much courage does he have? But these are not it; these
darknesses are not the only thing. Perfection
and holiness may be beyond our grasp, but surely trying is not.
Surely some things are as they appear, untainted
in any given context. Perhaps it is just that exploitation is easy,
that morality and wisdom bring only pain and sadness, that playing
to the disease is simpler than living for a cure. Perhaps
everything I've ever thought is wrong. I am a hypocrite;
I am no different from what I see. Evil is a visit from within,
a manifestation of myself, an unfolding of the hidden contours
of my self-hate and doubt. I, too, am here,
cycling around Greenlake, seeking for something that,
although I can not name it, I won't find. The sun is
setting. It will be night soon. I turn off the path,
head up the hill. My legs ache; I'm not strong enough,
yet, to ride up Phinney Ridge. I stop, get off the bike,
breathe deeply, feel the burn subside in my thighs and start walking.


Poem by Dennis Tyler, copyright 2001.