By Cody Kucker
Between spokes of a spring-borne bicycle,
the redpolls peck at snow,
foraging through clumped leaf chaff for seeds.
The bicycle’s purple,
a pedal permafrosted, its tires flat.
The man who lived here before me,
Michael, needed running water
for his daughter who had just turned fourteen,
sharing a loft with daddy no longer
plausible, though he didn’t seem bothered
when telling me, but he told me.
The bicycle was beneath the snow then.
There is something about a bicycle
abandoned, the liberated but still
wheels, a pedal exactly stopped, the rust
eating the chain and rims, the handle bars,
flaking off and mixing with the minced leaves
the redpolls take into their beaks.
Copyright 2021 Kucker