In this compact piedmont coal town, a hospital,
a walk-in wedding chapel, and a funeral home
are all within a half-mile radius of steep-grade roads,
and you can get on a bicycle outside the maternity ward,
push-off vigorously, merge on to Court Street,
lean a hard right to the Ding-Dong Wedding Chapel,
wave as you pass my house, then, looking both ways,
dash lickety-split across the street to the Frost Funeral Home,
never pedaling once, while the whole contraption,
of which you are a part, frame and wheels, bone and heart,
all that makes you quick, whirs for once in concert,
so brief and sweet you lift your arms and glide, hands free,
the last few yards and come to rest at the place
that drew you from the start, downhill all the way.

Previously published in Triquarterly Online, 2011