Unspoken by Kathryn Guelcher

Unspoken
by
Kathryn Guelcher

Tonight, I think of last summer.

We rode bikes back in the soup-inky blackness

after a little too much drink and dinner.

The sitter would have the kids in bed

by now. We turned down the tree-lined

darkness of River Drive—one mile out,

I noted from former running days.

I followed your pleasant swizzles,

so smooth on the fresh pavement.

The click and buzz of pedaling:

pause, pedal, cruise . . . dipping

from one side to the other
—like a pair of tipsy aerial things, we were.

Then one of us picked up the pace,

then the other,

leisure, turned full speed time trial.

You pulled in ahead.

While you put the bikes away, I keyed in

and paid the sitter-- no explanation

asked for nor offered

for my splotchy-faced puffing.

No need to speak

of what had neither been started

nor finished out there.

Beyond our window,

a great blue heron, startled by laughter,

returned then, wings pumping gracefully

as it resumed its place on the riverbank

across the way.

Kathryn Guelcher teaches high school English in a suburb outside Chicago, where she makes every attempt to keep poetry alive in the classroom. She is married to a man she describes as "hilarious and bright" and has three " loquacious" young children.

Ross Kightly:
Keeping 'poetry alive in the classroom' - a very good way is to set an excellent example like this of being a committed practitioner oneself. Lovely bit of work with the dynamics of the ride firmly there in the language; thank you, Kathryn.
Posted 09/17/2013 09:57 AM

KevinArnold:
What a marvelously-mysterious poem! We get to write our own surrounding narrative. I posit one thing: they're in love.
Posted 09/17/2013 08:34 AM

dotief@comcast.net:
Having just returned from Key West and many a tipsy bike ride home, I can truly relate to this wonderful poem. It captures the magic quite well, I'd say!
Posted 09/17/2013 07:59 AM

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