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Patricia Clark: My Father on a Bicycle
If you ever saw my father in shorts, you wouldn't forget his stick-thin legs, the knees knobby as windfall dwarf apples. And the only time I saw him ride a bike, Oakes Street, I think, he pedaled "no hands" down the street to show me the stance. He wasn't a runner either, thought he'd move at a quick trot when trouble came to our door-- usually when the twins caught somebody's wrath. Once they set an oat-grass field on fire, and trucks came, red and furious down the boulevard. Another time, after a morning of water-fat balloons lobbed at cars, the cops shadowed our porch. Our father was an ambler, a stroller, a tall stander. I can see him, heron-alert, bare-headed, the waters of the Satsop or Nooksack, the cold Chehalis, up past his knees, casting a line among boulders, deadwood, and drop-offs. Deep, moving water his abiding friend.
Copyright 2022. First published in The Atlantic. Republished in My Father on a Bicycle (Michigan State, 2005).
Patricia Clark is the author of six books of poetry: Self-Portrait with a Million Dollars; The Canopy; Sunday Rising; She Walks Into the Sea; My Father on a Bicycle; and North of Wondering.
Vox Populi 
I really enjoyed this poem, Patricia!
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Lovely, Evocative, Patricia.
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