Einstein’s Bicycle
Riding my bike in humid light,
I roll up the landscape behind me,
gouging a bottomless trench.
My bike is ordinary but works
in two dimensions, destroying
time and depth along the way.
Einstein foresaw this bicycle
and claimed that he invented it.
His friends in Princeton laughed,
but then no one has real friends
in Princeton except undergrads
fumbling through sexual adventures.
Einstein predicted that riding
this two-dimensional bicycle
would collect masses of matter
industrial sectors could process
into plastics so inert
they’d survive the hottest nova.
I’m not proud of complying
to this eco-hostile vision,
but am compelled to pump my bike
up the steepest hill, thereby
leveling it. The pain I inflict
on the rural landscape will heal,
but when I enter the city and scrape
the heavy streets into hay rolls,
folding skyscrapers to fit
into breast pockets, stripping art
from museum walls, I’m spoiling
too many favorite geometries.
Exhausted, I park my bike and slump
into a coffee shop while mobs
stampede down to the harbor
to pray to the sea to repeal
the more passionate laws of physics
and grant us a last chance to think.