Indiana Problem

The angry pug chased me for

awhile as I rode my bike. Time

turned almost to liquid, or an

almost-solid light, a heavy amber.

Suspended in it were late-summer

Indiana trees, enormous and

kindly with their old-man voices.

I steered the bike toward the edge

of the moment, dog teeth near

my heel. Instead of fear I felt

a lifting-off and knew that all

things happened in tandem: under

this space I was also damply

reading in the shag-carpeted living

room with the smells of old candles

and summer street gathering

around me like a body. The saddest

part of leaving the body is the

lack of other bodies, their sharp

flying-off somewhere from

a space that doesn’t need them.