Cyclist Encounters an Insect

This butterfly, the touch of a cat’s soft paw

Against my chest.  A short moment of vibration.

The soft claw of wing’s edge.   Then air.

                               Lawrence N. DiCostanzo

                              On the Volcano road,

                              May 27, 2007

Resurrection

Bury me in a meadow, some untilled waste,

Next to fields of lettuce or off the highway’s verge.

Let it be my stone, engraved in repeated rotation

Through timeless years.  Where rabbits start in the grass,

Mice rustle, and slender king snake makes his way,

In the warm breezeless understory of bush and weed;

Where song sparrow hangs on sideways to dry stalk,

And kestrel teeters, flaps, teeters, on rigid feathers

Spread out in points.  Here it is dry and quiet.

 

And, when the Resurrection comes, let the trumpet be

The brassy, tuneless vibration of the bee, against the clacking

Of locust wings.  Let my waking eyes gaze up

On sweet fennel or Queen Anne’s lace in sun.

And, if God should come to look for me, Let Him be

The cyclist, pausing to rest.  Hands light

On handlebars and saddle, He gazes on this modesty.

And let Him say:  This is too good to waste.

                                     Lawrence N. DiCostanzo

                                    June 27 – 28; September 14, 2005

Top of the World: Bicycling Coleman Valley Road  

 I climb above the fog, yet do not know

The reason for this effort. Can it be

The pleasure when I draw up and see

How sunlight blankets rolling grassland with no

Dark tree to stitch it to the blue. I slow

And see the seam of the horizon smooth

Against a bowl of blue, the only truth

And world my distant forebears long ago

Could love. They hoped beyond that line

There await the lovely muscled herds, the streams

Of fish, the comfort of a hunt: in short, the Place

Where limbs feel happy aches. God, rushing by when time

Runs down, should see I have romantic dreams

And fondly scoop me up from this high place —

The cycling dawdler with the dreamy face.

Lawrence N. DiCostanzo

                              July 12 – 15, 2009

 

The Race

Don’t tell me how many miles you ran,

Tell me of the flowers underfoot at the first mile

How the birds sang when the end was in sight,

The way the clouds parted for the light.

The night.

 

 

Tell me the story of the grass, how it flattened

As the wind blew you by,

How it sprang up again.

 

The rain.

Tell of the flight.

 

Don’t tell me how many miles you ran, how fast,

Tell me of the last mile,

and whether you reached at the last.