We rode through the Centrum, toward
the outskirts of Alkmaar, weaving
'round windmills that no longer grind the wheat,
and we rolled onto Oudorp, once the sea floor.

They were searching, too.
Wading through death, divorce, affairs,
building a bungalow admist cobblestone
streets, hidden yards and homes,

flourishes of dried reeds and Irish
blossoms, photographs without frames
taped to the wall, bacterial colonies growing
in the cellar under the stairs, waiting
to feed the sourdough,
clotheslines taut with damp garments, water
basking under a full spectrum.

Handymen, sociologists, paperboys, former midwives,
free spirits. I guess we are all human.

So we push on,
overturn the Dutch dunes, fly by
fields of talkative sheep, piles of tulip
bulbs waiting for the market, under a low sky filled
with ominous clouds, past the whooshing
of the turbines.

And the wind finds its course as we ride over
dikes, through the grote markt, over
the Wadenzee, among cyclers, familiar but
speaking jibberish.

**********

i wrote this poem when we left Alkmaar, after our first couchsurfing.com experience. we stayed with a woman named Heleen, a fifty-something new age hippy who fed us organic food and made sure the dead water that came out of the tap was exposed to full spectrum light before we drank it. needless to say, we enjoyed her and the experience very much.