Where You Going?

Twilight, and I pilot my bike
down an empty city street.
Pastel pink and blue softens
silent gray concrete.
A flashing sign: “Detour,”
arrow pointing left—I stop,
things happen.

My mind wanders (those wheels never stop)
and I'm a farmer in my head, end of
the day, wondering about my crops,
if it's a good year, and how long I will
continue to till and sow these familiar,
lonesome fields of bachelorhood.

Wheelchair man, doing quick spins
mid-street, as if dancing to music,
rolls up, stops. Vietnam vet, he says.

His hands, black from the chair's wheels; his
pot belly, creeping out from his shirt; his
gray stubble; rattly coffee cup containing three
Canadian dollars and not much more, he tells me.
Do you work for the police?

More questions: Where do you live, how far
have you gone? Me, to him: Where you going?
Got no home, he says. Going to Troy. The street breathes,
I keep my wondering quiet for now, let
the canyon-echo traffic fill the space.

A cab appears, he hails it.
Cabbie, heavy subcontinent accent, loads his
suitcase, the chair. Where you going? More mumbles,
the cup rattles, and I wonder what I have
in my back pocket.

Another moment hangs, a dangling
cigarette in his lip, unlit, as I wait
for something to happen.

Take care, bud, I say twice.
You, too.

The cabbie drops the lever into drive,
and pulls away. Where you going?

Good question.