For Wouter Weylandt - Maybe Alone on My Bike

MAYBE ALONE ON MY BIKE

by William Stafford

I listen, and the mountain lakes 

hear snowflakes come on those winter wings 

only the owls are awake to see, 

their radar gaze and furred ears 

alert. In that stillness a meaning shakes;

 And I have thought (maybe alone 

on my bike, quaintly on a cold 

evening pedaling home), Think!-- 

the splendor of our life, its current unknown

as those mountains, the scene no one sees.

O citizens of our great amnesty: 

we might have died. We live. Marvels 

coast by, great veers and swoops of air 

so bright the lamps waver in tears, 

and I hear in the chain a chuckle I like to hear.