Margaret Hasse
mmhasse@gmail.com

Bicycles: Of a Kind


Outside the public library, a rusty black bike
shares a lock with another worn bike

stowed in the metal rack.  Both nose
their front wheels into the stanchion

like dairy cattle. They lean together in shared
solidarity with all things closely paired:

Barret and Browning on a book lover’s list.
Kissed lips. Two-by-two toward an ark’s hold.

Autumn and leaves in their wedding of gold.
The words empty and nest, come and go,

and a man and a woman, long-married mates,
who slow-walk our block with shuffling gates.




​
Consideration of the Feet

​
Lying back in a hot bath 
I lift my legs to look

at my feet above the water
like two rosy babies just born.

I delicately pat them dry.
They chum around together— 

twin girls dressed alike
in fluffy pink mules.
 
I think how death
with its blue chill

first visits the feet.
Standing and looking down,

the platters of my feet 
with their teacup ankles

look small to hold up
the largess of me.

These feet were voyageurs
enabling me to carry a canoe

from my shoulders
like a dinosaur spine.

They have been wild to waltz.
They march when I am mad,

have their weaknesses 
for flip-flops with plastic flowers.

I present my feet to
a white-masked woman

in a beauty parlor who hums
the hymn All Things Bright

and Beautiful as she works.
I imagine the bent head

of a kneeling Jesus 
with his basin of water and oil.

-both poems published in Earth’s Appetite (Nodin Press 2013)