Some Unseen Force

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Prin and her willow-basket-to-be

The heat came on fast, the snow receding by the hour, every ditch and depression now filled with flowing melt. The sun feels well-earned; it wasn’t a hard winter overall, but what hardness it contained was back-loaded, all the cold and snow we didn’t have in January saved up for March. In an interest-bearing account, at that.

Today I drove to Waterville, Maine to deliver a talk at Colby College and then back again, left arm propped in the window opening, slowly reddening under the high sun. Route 2 most of the way, an unfolding tour of small towns well past their prime, Dunkin’ Donuts and log yards, rusted trucks and trailer homes, a proliferation of under-dressed and over-tattooed women standing on debris-strewn front lawns, cigarettes in hand, skin pale as the departing snow. They looked so damn confident.

Coming into the town of Mexico, Maine, I drove for a time behind a man on a Harley Davidson. He sat the way men on Harley’s sit, knees cast wide, crotch to the wind, helmet-less, riding slow as he weaved from one side of the road to the other. Not drunkenly or dangerously, just enjoying himself. Like a bird or lazy fish. And though it’s been years since I’ve owned a motorcycle, and although the last time I rode a motorcycle I ended up in the hospital with a nurse shining a light in my eyes every 30 minutes to be sure there was still something going on in there, I couldn’t help wanting to be on that bike. It must have felt so good.

The Harley turned. I watched him go, and shortly thereafter passed an old man on a bicycle, a single hubcap slung over his handlebar end, shiny trinket plucked from the roadside. I waved as I passed, but I was just another car in an endless line of cars, and his gaze was forward facing, the bike’s wheels churning onward, the hubcap swinging side-to-side, as if propelled by some unseen force.