DeCycles 09 - Appalachian Mountains - 1700 Miles - 80 Cyclists

Somewhere on the Blueridge Parkway in Virginia

homeplace bluegrass fest, lowertown fest & my window

This is the homeplace at LBL. A farming community that works and lives using 19th century technology. This was the annual Bluegrass Pickin' Festival.









Bawn in the Mash at Lowertown Music & Arts Festival in Paducah, KY. (Soooo good!)


Firedancers. (Is that the correct word? Probably not.)



This is the window in my room.

Cherishing What Isn't

by Jack Gilbert

Ah, you three women whom I have loved in this
long life, along with the few others.
And the four I may have loved, or stopped short
of loving. I wander through these woods
making songs of you. Some of regret, some
of longing, and a terrible one of death.
I carry the privacy of your bodies
and hearts in me. The shameful ardor
and the shameless intimacy, the secret kinds
of happiness and the walled-up childhoods.
I carol loudly of you among trees emptied
of winter and rejoice quietly in summer.
A score of women if you count love both large
and small, real ones that were brief
and those that lasted. Gentle love and some
almost like an animal with its prey.
What is left is what's alive in me. The failing
of your beauty and its remaining.
You are like countries in which my love
took place. Like a bell in the trees
that makes your music in each wind that moves.
A music composed of what you have forgotten.
That will end with my ending.