Mendelssohn’s Bicycle

by Richard Taylor

Mendelssohn is coming down the road
on a bicycle and not with a violin
but with a whistle, though he wonders
would a violin keep up with his feet’s
frenzied pedaling, the hill’s lift and its dive,
the wind’s thin hum in the spokes.

Light fingers of air steal his hair flat back
for wheeling into the earth’s pent up
hell-bent melody.

He wants to whistle the universe close,
and he lifts his arms like the handlebars
wide, rides with no hands, conducts
the wind lest it turn lazy, the clouds
lest they rest in the trees.

A crescent curve through vast cornfields
turns the belligerent wind to his back
till his bicycle fills like a wishful kite
with gusts of amorous blue.

Over Sawyer’s flats to the beach at last,
the cycling boy and his whistle slow, the wheels
concede, lean quiet by the bath house door.

Ripples tripping the water go shy,
the breeze pauses to listen: a concerto in e-minor
leaps from the boy’s whistle
into Mendelssohn’s ear.