Poetic Observations • 9

Our children are our legends.
You are mine. You have our name.
My hair was once like yours.

And the world
is less bitter to me
because you will retell the story.

From Legends
Eavan Boland

Dedication

Many years ago (over a half-century now) in the town of Papeete on the island of Tahiti, there lived a man who managed to survive by constantly scavenging garbage cans and piles of refuse and street gutters. His features were asian, but no one seemed to know where he had been born, where he had come from. No one knew his true name. He rarely spoke, and then only to himself. He concentrated entirely on his work, his face locked in a grimace.

   One day four young boys, began following him, keeping their distance, but never letting him out of their sight. Soon they began making fun of him and what he did, joking that he probably ate the garbage and all kinds of other horrible tasting stuff, and how stupid he was for doing that. They said these things often, not caring if he heard them because they knew he couldn’t understand them. They named him Chik Chak, yelling it at him as if he were a dog to be trained to recognize it. Sometimes they chanted it as they followed him, and once in awhile he stared back over a shoulder at them and anger distorted his face. Off and on for months they shadowed him.

   Then one day they left the island, never to return. They rarely spoke of the man and what they had done to him, and when they did it was only another memory from their childhoods, nothing special.

I was one of those boys.

I will continue to ask his forgiveness for the rest of my life. The Legions In the Mud posts are dedicated to him, to all those held in slums and pits and dumps, ridiculed and forgotten.

Indispensable

Anyone who uses a bicycle as their primary transportation quickly understands that constant and unflagging awareness of their surroundings on whatever kind of road they're using is key to       their survival. And while the need for protection in the form of helmets is pretty much indisputable, I will maintain that another       item – especially a particular variant of it – is just as valuable.

This bit of genius is the Take-a-Look Mirror from Bike Peddler. It can be fastened to a helmet or glasses. If using the latter, flat-sided stems provide the easiest fit, but round work as well. I've used one of these for years (literally one – I've never had to repair or replace it), and I cannot overemphasize how valuable it's been. It can be adjusted to give you precisely the angle you need to keep an eye on the traffic behind you. While it does take some trial-and-error to get that angle right, it doesn't take long, and re-setting it (not something you have to do often) is easy, since vibration from riding doesn't jiggle the mirror out of its setting. The acrylic mirror allows you to see details clearly at well more than a hundred yards distant. Best of all, this mirror allows you to dart your gaze at it for only an instant to see what you need to before turning back to the road ahead.

   Available in many bike shops as well as online, it sells for fifteen to twenty dollars. 

Poetic Observations • 8

.         .         .

The cottage had lost its roof long since and it was filled tight with lilac, not yet in bloom, while nettle and elder had overwhelmed the outbuilding behind; but there was still a stone bench by the door, and Stephen sat upon it, leaning against the wall. Down here in the hollow the night had not yet yielded, and there was still a green twilight. An ancient wood:  the slope was too great and the ground too broken for it ever to have been cut or tended and the trees were still part of the primaeval forest; vast shapeless oaks, often hollow and useless for timber, held out their arms and their young fresh green leaves almost to the middle of the clearing, held them out with never a tremor,       for down here the air was so still that gossamer floated with no perceptible movement at all. Still and silent: although far-off blackbirds could be heard away on the edge of the wood and although the stream at the bottom murmured perpetually the combe was filled with a living silence.

.         .         .

From The Reverse of the Medal
Patrick O'Brian