Each day our group pedals
single file on cobbled, country roads,
along miles of stone fence built
with ancient hands, past olive trees
lined with nets. The olives let go
one by one when they are ready.
In October, these beach-edged towns
are empty except for an aging Italian
farmer who shouts, Grazi, Americani,
—his rescue, 60 years before, fixed
in his memory. Another time a goat
herd spills from the fields, interrupts
our journey, so we wait to continue.
I catch you in my mirror—your familiar
wisps of grey in the breeze. You stay
behind on the flats. You muse and chat
with slower riders, in no hurry like
the rest of us who push forward. Then
the unexpected—a long rise in the road.
As my bike moves ahead, its gears sputter
with doubt. Somehow you hear it and
accelerate—past the overconfident,
the athletic, the ambitious—reaching me
in one steady sprint. You tell me how to
adjust, to breathe, to keep pace. I manage
to make it over, catch up with the group.
But just when the trail levels, you
slip back again behind the others.
Nancy Lubarsky, a retired educator, holds a doctorate in English Education. Her work appeared in Exit 13, Lips, Tiferet, Stillwater Review and Paterson Literary Review. She’s published two books: Tattoos (Finishing Line) and The Only Proof (Kelsay Press), her latest, Truth to the Rumors, a 2023 Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award finalist, will be published in Fall, 2024 (Kelsay Press).