Unicyclist with UM Umbrella

Say you’re driving, idling in rush hour traffic,

and the wind has just shared its best open secret.

Say you’ve come from signing divorce papers.

The palm fronds, streetside, sag as if burdened.

Someone is navigating between cars, busting ass

to get from point A to B in a hellish downpour.

His slaloming of the stopped lines, on a unicycle,

dismantles the distances in a whoosh of inches.

A rain-diamonded thoroughfare sings of his tire,

the rooster-tailing arc of spray from it. It seems

impossible that there could be anyone so at ease

with what it takes to just press on. Like a surfer

stepped from an ocean that radiates through him.

They say we’re electrons. Particles, wavelengths.

Still, it takes a native Floridian to move like this

with a University of Miami parasol as accessory.