A Prayer for Motion

O Artemis!
Goddess of women’s sport!
Guard and guide me on my bicycle.
Let me track the asphalt
for an unobstructed path,
let the cars see and avoid me
(and, ideally, not yell “Dorothy!”).

True, I was a dork in school
where you most flex your influence—
four-eyes at best, tripping at soccer
over the foot of the flute player,
who also tripped, and we lay laughing
as the guys who cared about winning
angrily took the ball and dribbled
down the field away from us.

But even then, I could ride
my crappy one-speed right up the hill
on Seventeenth Street—the same one
I would fly down every morning,
no hands!
		(My mother would have died
if she had seen me.) (Or, maybe, killed me.)

O Artemis!
Eternal maiden who releases
daughters from their mothers’ fears!
Hold me safe from tires to helmet
as I lean into this turn.