Although I Did Make It Out of Bed

Sestina

Spokane, Washington — Photos by Jonathan Potter ⓒ 2024

Although I did make it out of bed
and out the door in time to hop
on the Lime bike I'd left on the humble corner
across Bernard (to avoid aspersions)
and in time to ride said bike 
(graffiti beautifully sullying its flanks)

to the cliff edge above the city's flanks
(which is to say, from the river bed,
the north and south, where, if you bike,
many a bridge will make the hop
from one side to the other, without aspersions,
a pleasant one, from corner to corner) —

yes, although I did go from that corner
powered by my own thighs and flanks
and a bit of lithium ion (aspersions?)
to the sun still lying in her nightly bed
but beginning to kick off the blankets and hop
like the dream or the thought of riding a bike,

I myself rode just such a bike
to the cliff edge near the airborne corner 
of Cliff Drive and Ben where a hop
the wrong way could land you in the flanks
of pines and pussywillows and the bed
of some poor homeless fellow's aspersions

not to mention the sprung rhymic aspersions
of some drunk poet riding a bike
above you in the wee hours out of bed,
but yes I stood at that corner
(the bike exhibiting its stunning flanks)
at the earliest hour a man could hop

out of bed and into clothes and then to hop
onto a bike and to ride through the aspersions
of the uncertainty which certainly flanks
the sun as it lifts me and my bike
like a scene from the VHS (from the corner
Blockbuster Video) of E.T. (out of bed)

to see the sky as a bed and to hop
off (like turning a corner from aspersions
to love) and then bike to morning's blue flanks.

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