Kevin Miller

Bike Path

Riding the red bicycle you wear headphones, 
you ride double with Bessie Smith, warm tones 
summer heat, behind you North Dakota stories 
where cream and peaches are sacramental, 
a peach’s paper wrap makes a sound fit for worship, 
and you carry the devotion to the coast and part 
way back. Vonnegut might have warned Lot’s Wife 
about trains, Prine sang about the altar boy and
the local commuter, and Satchel added never.
The vanished warn us about looking back. 
Maybe it was the old ruse, Don’t think of elephant. 
Keep the backstory as a charm. Keep it on an altar
with photos and handwritten notes. Be a votive
when you explain, this is my mother in Manila,
my great-grandmother who tended bar in Butte.
The Empress of the Blues propels the red bike,
you ride the circle, telegraph where you will be.

Kevin Miller's Vanish won the Wandering Aengus Press publication award in 2019. MoonPath Press published Spring Meditation in 2022. Miller taught in the public schools of Washington State for thirty-nine years. He lives near Coupeville, WA.