a crescendo: odes

Le Tour Week Three Poems

Dane Hamann

Ode to TT Helmets (Stage 16)

O teardrop. O gleaming bucket. You
Carry the vines of the body
And frame a face flowering
with pain. You’re not stylish.
But you carve air like
A lightsaber
Slices through
Battle
Droids.
O
Visor.
You reflect
The screaming world,
The absurd speed of
Tri bars and disc wheels. You
Flash past fans even uphill.
O yellow helmet. Rest for now,
A blow landed is not yet a win.


Ode to Sean Kelly Not Understanding the Tactic and the Exciting Racing That Usually Follows (Stage 17)

He’s often right, of course. Why push the pace
Early while holding the yellow jersey?
But talent is like a mountain, it makes
The race simply because it’s there. Mercy
Is quashed hard by kilometer zero.
Shove the race down their throats until it meets
The rising balloon of the heart. So why
Not blow the race apart, be the hero?
Attacking alpine racing overheats
The Dane’s rivals, their chances dead and gone.


Ode to Miscalculation (Stage 18)

It’s been a runaway freight train
Breathing down the neck all day
Type of stage. Though willing to dare,

The break is still only allowed a hair
Of a gap, as sprint chances wane
In the closing week. But nerves fray

As the cracked-lip break stays away.
In every sweat-stung blink, a flair
Of drama. Reticence proves the bane

Of the peloton, as sprint teams refrain
From the front. A risky game they all play
Of shattered joy and sunlit nightmare.


Ode to Infinite Divisibility (Stage 19)

Everything is shredded. A hard day on
The bike tears apart already sore muscles.
Like antique glass, the peloton fractures
Into myriad chunks. At first, chaos
Rips through the long rope of riders. They race
As if tomorrow doesn’t exist. They split
Again and again. Buried so deeply
In the bright atomic bunker of pain,
They segment and seal off themselves little
By little as the void of exhaustion
Invades their very being. A small hill
Divides them once more. A final trio
Makes the line. The first to cross remembers
That he is whole. He is part of a whole.


Ode to Going Out in a Blaze of Glory (Stage 20)

Physics.
The heart wishes
To break the clockwork that
Rules the bike race. The savage laws
Of watts

And gaps,
Speed and desire
And distance. The heart takes
A hammer to all of it. Legs
Striking

Pedals
In rhythmic blows.
Lungs looking to escape
The heaving torso. The madness
Building

Into
A crescendo.
Sometimes the math works out.
Like points for a polka-dot kit.
Sometimes

Being
Doomed is being
Loved. Sometimes being loved
Means outlasting the clock to say
Goodbye.


Ode to Having the Freshest Legs (Stage 21)
[A golden shovel based on a quote from Jordi Meeus]

Thin bluish-gray skies cover the boulevard from
The full blaze of the Parisian summer sun. The
Riders willing to dare for a teeth-grinding moment
Push huge numbers to escape on the false flat. We
Know they hold little hope from the time they went
All-out on the harsh cobbles. The peloton is a full-
Fledged blackhole today. Nothing, no dust, gas,
Or light will survive the destiny it demands. A my-
Opic fate, maybe. But what matters are the legs.
Good legs can mean an acceleration as soft as felt
On a pool table. We watch the finish line as, incredibly,
A second green jersey dives forward, making good.