Hike You!: The Bicycle That Came Out of the River

Some objects become symbols because somebody deliberately makes them symbols. Others just show up.

This bicycle came out of the Rock River.

By the time Ryan Davis photographed it, it was standing in front of the old Rockford Register Star building, looking less like a bicycle somebody might ride than something the river had made. Mud coated the frame. Rust had gotten into it. Whatever ordinary life it had once possessed was over. Someone had pulled it from the water and propped it upright, and there it stood: wrecked, filthy, strangely dignified.

We kept seeing things like this because we kept walking.

That is where Hike You! came from. Ryan and I spent years walking Rockford together, often covering the same streets and paths again and again. The exhibition is about what happened when repetition stopped making those places more familiar and instead made them increasingly strange: two people taking “the same steps in the same town” until ordinary Rockford became “new and mysterious... and magical.”

It wasn't conceived as a documentary project. We weren't compiling an inventory of Rockford landmarks or trying to photograph the city's most photogenic places. We walked. Ryan carried a camera. I carried whatever it is a poet carries around in his head. Things presented themselves.

A rock. A discarded vacuum cleaner. An old theater marquee. Something dragged from the bottom of the river. The eventual subjects of Hike You! could be beautiful, ridiculous, damaged, historic, nearly invisible or all of those things at once. Even magnet fishing at Fordham Dam became part of the vocabulary of the project: “dragging rock bottom / we reel in rusty remnants / of the Screw City.”

The bicycle was different.

By then, both Ryan and I were in motion ourselves.

We had previous lives behind us. Versions of ourselves, expectations, habits, destinations. Neither of us was simply walking around Rockford for exercise. Without necessarily announcing it to ourselves at the time, we were walking into new lives. The walks became part of that transition. So did the photographs. So did the poems.

And there, outside the Register Star, was this bicycle that had literally been pulled up from beneath the surface of the city.

It had been somewhere else.

Now it was here.

That was hard to miss.

The haiku that emerged from the photograph was:

a little mud in my
gears won't make me forget my
heart is the motor

I like that the poem doesn't pretend the mud isn't there.

There is mud in the gears. Of course there is.

Transformation is frequently described as though the old life simply falls away and the new one begins cleanly. That wasn't what this bicycle suggested to me, and it wasn't what our lives looked like. You bring things with you. Some damage remains. The gears grind. The frame shows where it has been.

But the heart is still the motor.

The bicycle became one of the pieces that most clearly expressed something I gradually understood about the larger Hike You! project. We thought we were repeatedly walking through Rockford, but Rockford was also providing us with a language for understanding what was happening to us.

The city was full of metaphors we hadn't asked for.

That mattered particularly in this location. Behind the bicycle stands the former Rockford Register Star building, itself a monument to a Rockford that was already changing. In front of it is an object recovered from the Rock River. And somewhere between the old newspaper building, the river mud, the rusted bicycle, Ryan's photograph and my seventeen syllables were two people trying to figure out what came next.

There was no reason to know, when we started walking, that any of this would become an exhibition.

That is one of the things I love most about Hike You!

It emerged.

A walk became another walk. A photograph became a poem. Familiar streets became unfamiliar. Things we'd passed dozens of times suddenly demanded attention. Eventually we had accumulated evidence of something neither of us had quite intended to make.

The project's subjects can appear almost comically insignificant. That's part of its philosophy. The Times Theatre doesn't need a magnificent restored marquee to become worthy of attention; its modest one can resemble “the proud grin of a third child / missing their first tooth.” A dirty bicycle doesn't have to be repaired, polished and returned to the road before it can tell you something about continuing.

Sometimes you get dragged out of the river covered in mud.

Sometimes somebody stands you back up.

And sometimes that is enough to begin again.

Hike You!
Thomas L. Vaultonburg + Ryan Davis
Fall ArtScene 2026 — Rockford, Illinois

Five Haiku By Thomas L. Vaultonburg That Explain Prairie Zen

 

Five Haiku That Explain Prairie Zen

Prairie Zen is less a philosophy than a way of paying attention. It borrows something from Zen—the suspicion that the world does not require our explanations in order to be complete—but locates that attention in the ordinary landscapes of the Midwest: fields, roadsides, birds, weeds, creeks, farmyards, weather, abandoned things, and the small animals going about their business while human beings remain convinced everything is about us.

There are no mountaintop monasteries required. Prairie Zen can happen beside a drainage ditch or behind a grocery store. Its central gesture is decentering the self. Nature isn't scenery arranged for our contemplation, and it isn't obligated to become a metaphor for whatever we're feeling. The field doesn't need us. The bird doesn't know it has entered a poem. The world is already happening. The poet's job is sometimes simply to become quiet enough to notice it—and occasionally to recognize the comedy of having thought himself important in the first place.

These five haiku approach that idea from different directions.

1.

first frost—
I thank the field
for not needing me

This may be the most concise statement of Prairie Zen in the collection.

Human beings are accustomed to placing ourselves at the center of the landscape. We cultivate fields, name rivers, build roads through forests, and then speak as though the world has acquired meaning through our presence. This haiku reverses that relationship. The field's indifference becomes a gift.

There is liberation in discovering that the world doesn't require your supervision. Frost comes. Grass dies back. Seeds wait. Spring eventually returns. None of it asks whether we're ready.

Prairie Zen finds comfort rather than insult in that fact.

Small Songs For Weary Travelers By Thomas L. Vaultonburg

2.

wrong turn
right sunrise
and nothing to fix

The poem begins with one of the fundamental human assumptions: I have made a mistake. By the third line, the entire premise has disappeared.

The road may be wrong according to the itinerary, but the sunrise doesn't know that. The distinction between the correct road and the incorrect one exists entirely inside the traveler.

That is an important Prairie Zen idea. It doesn't mean that choices have no consequences or that direction never matters. It means that our categories—success, failure, progress, delay—aren't necessarily categories the world shares with us.

Sometimes the wrong road contains the right sunrise.

Nothing needs to be repaired.

3.

beetle crossing—
I slow my whole life
to match its pace

Here the hierarchy between observer and observed collapses.

Normally the beetle would be the insignificant thing. We are busy. We have somewhere to go. The insect crossing our path is almost beneath notice. Instead, the speaker accepts the beetle's measurement of time.

For several seconds, the beetle determines the speed of the universe.

That reversal is quintessential Prairie Zen. Attention makes the supposedly small world enormous. The poem doesn't ask the beetle to teach a lesson. It doesn't turn the beetle into a symbol. The speaker simply agrees to inhabit its pace.

The encounter changes the person, not the beetle.

4.

empty basket—
carrying home
the birdsong

Prairie Zen repeatedly questions what it means to possess something. Here, materially, the speaker returns with nothing. The basket is empty. Yet the journey has hardly been unproductive.

This is abundance without acquisition.

You cannot put birdsong in a basket. You cannot keep it, sell it, preserve it, or prove that you possessed it. You can only have been present when it happened.

That distinction matters. Prairie Zen isn't an argument against the material world; it is an argument for noticing how much of our lives consists of things that cannot become property: weather, light, birdsong, silence, companionship, a particular afternoon.

The empty basket comes home full.

5.

old monastery—
a fox sleeping
through enlightenment

And this is where Prairie Zen reveals that it is willing to laugh at Zen itself.

Human beings construct monasteries, develop doctrines, write books, meditate for decades, debate enlightenment—and somewhere nearby a fox goes to sleep.

Perhaps the fox has missed enlightenment.

Perhaps the fox has understood it perfectly.

The poem wisely refuses to decide.

That humor is essential to Prairie Zen because taking one's own spirituality too seriously is another way of putting the self back at the center of everything. The fox doesn't need a philosophy explaining how to be a fox. It doesn't need to transcend its foxhood. It sleeps.

Meanwhile, we're still inside the monastery trying to figure things out.

The Prairie Is Already Doing It

Taken together, these poems suggest what I mean by Prairie Zen. It isn't a doctrine and shouldn't become one. There are no commandments, membership requirements, or correct interpretations. It is closer to a habit of attention: notice what is actually happening before deciding what it means.

A field doesn't need you. A wrong turn can be sufficient. A beetle can determine the pace. An empty basket can contain birdsong. A sleeping fox may know something the monastery doesn't.

The landscape doesn't promise enlightenment.

It offers something better.

It keeps happening.

Sean Wright Reviews Vanished Roads By Thomas L. Vaultonburg

 Vanished Roads

by Thomas L. Vaultonburg

Reviewed by Sean Wright

These Haiku

July 2026

Publisher: Wolf Twin Books

Length: 104+ pages

Buy

The book as object

For many readers today, English-language haiku, senryu, and related Japanese short forms exist almost entirely on a screen. Poems arrive through Substack newsletters, Facebook groups, online journals, or social media feeds, often stripped of any physical context. Vanished Roads is therefore refreshing before one even begins reading.

The volume itself is beautifully conceived. Although I am unfamiliar with the American sizing conventions, it measures roughly three-quarters of an A5 page—slightly larger than an iPhone. It feels substantial without being cumbersome: slim enough to slip into a back pocket yet sturdy enough to withstand repeated reading.

The cover illustrations possess a quiet whimsy that immediately reminded me of the work of Australian author and illustrator Kathleen Jennings. They invite rather than overwhelm, suggesting the reflective tone of the poems within.

More surprising is the inclusion of interior artwork. Contemporary English-language haiku collections often present poems without illustration, trusting entirely in the language. Here, however, the illustrations appear sparingly and with considerable restraint. While stylistically diverse, they share a preference for simple black-and-white line work that evokes mood rather than narrative. Their relationship to the poems recalls the long association between haiku and sumi-e painting: minimal marks suggesting far more than they describe.

It is also obvious that genuine care—and no small financial investment—has gone into the production of the volume itself. Haiku publishing has never been a path to riches, which makes these choices all the more admirable. The book is perfect bound, printed on quality matte stock, and finished with a heavy cover that feels durable in the hand.

Perhaps the most pleasing production decision is that every poem occupies its own page.

Many publishers, understandably conscious of production costs, squeeze several poems together. It saves paper, reduces page count, and lowers expenses. Wolf Twin Press has resisted that temptation. Each poem is allowed to breathe. Each page becomes a pause, encouraging the reader to linger before moving on. It almost certainly increased production costs while reducing commercial efficiency, but artistically it is unquestionably the right decision.

As someone deeply interested in the presentation of poetry, I can only tip my hat to the publishing team.

The poems

The collection contains 104 short poems, each afforded its own space.

What immediately struck me is how comfortably Vaultonburg inhabits the porous boundary between modern English-language haiku and senryu. Depending on one’s exposure to contemporary practice—and given that definitions continue to evolve—many readers will disagree about where individual poems belong.

Personally, I find this one of the collection’s greatest strengths. There is personality here. There is emotion. There is wit. There is reflection.

The old caricature that haiku consists solely of objective nature observation has always been an oversimplification of the Japanese tradition, and, frankly, it often produces rather dull English-language poetry. Vaultonburg understands that observation is never neutral. Every observation contains a choice: what to notice, what to omit, and how to frame experience.

Three poems, in particular, illustrate both the breadth of the collection and the consistency of the poet’s voice.

Observation as meditation

empty chapel—

a wasp tapping

at the stained glass

On first reading this appears to be a straightforward observational haiku. Yet, like many of the finest examples of the form, its apparent simplicity conceals remarkable depth.

The opening line immediately establishes stillness.

empty chapel—

The emptiness matters. Had worshippers been present, the poem would become social observation. Instead, the silence transforms the chapel into a contemplative space where the smallest sound becomes significant. The cut after the opening line is beautifully judged. Only then does our attention settle upon a single wasp.

The verb “tapping” is perfectly chosen. It is neither violent nor frantic. It is simply persistent. In the silence of an empty chapel, such a tiny sound becomes almost monumental. What elevates the poem, however, is its central ambiguity. We never know which side of the stained glass the wasp occupies. If it is outside, it seeks entry toward coloured light, continually thwarted by an invisible barrier. If it is inside, it longs to escape into the natural world beyond, with the chapel transformed from sanctuary into prison.

The poem wisely refuses to resolve this uncertainty.

The stained glass itself becomes a threshold between sacred and secular, inside and outside, permanence and transience. Yet those distinctions depend entirely upon where one stands.

Like the glass, the poem itself becomes a threshold. The reader may approach it from either side.

This ambiguity is not a puzzle requiring solution but part of the poem’s architecture. It rewards repeated reading because it continues generating fresh possibilities without ever abandoning the integrity of its observation.

Haiku and senryu meet

sagebrush flat—

a copperhead

corrects my posture

If the previous poem leans toward contemplative haiku, this one occupies the fascinating territory where haiku and senryu become almost indistinguishable.

The opening immediately places us within an unmistakably American landscape.

sagebrush flat—

The image evokes openness, dryness and solitude. Then comes the interruption.

a copperhead

Instantly the emotional atmosphere changes. Before the poem has even finished, the reader’s own body reacts. The final line delivers both humour and truth.

corrects my posture

No one consciously chooses impeccable posture when unexpectedly encountering a venomous snake. The body simply decides. The genius lies in the understated verb.

The snake becomes, momentarily, an involuntary yoga instructor. Yet the humour never depends upon anthropomorphism. The copperhead does nothing except exist. The correction belongs entirely to the speaker. This is why the poem succeeds simultaneously as haiku and senryu. Without the landscape and the snake there is no insight. Without the human response there is no humour.

Nature creates the revelation rather than serving merely as decorative scenery. It is difficult to imagine a better example of how artificial the haiku/senryu divide sometimes becomes.

Beyond haiku

I kept my shape

through stranger weather

than this

This third poem pushes even further. Some readers would no longer consider it haiku or senryu at all. I think they are both right—and missing something.

Formally speaking, this is lyric poetry.

There is no juxtaposition. No seasonal anchor. No single observed moment. Yet its sensibility remains unmistakably rooted in haiku practice. The opening line introduces an image that is simultaneously physical and metaphorical.

I kept my shape

Identity and Integrity. Resilience and Dignity. All remain possible readings.

The second line expands that metaphor beautifully.

through stranger weather

Choosing “stranger” rather than “worse” proves inspired. The emphasis falls not upon suffering but upon unpredictability. The final line quietly opens the poem into universality.

than this

The present difficulty remains unnamed. That omission allows every reader to supply their own illness, grief, political uncertainty or heartbreak. The poem never insists. It trusts. This trust in implication is pure haiku thinking.

Although formally lyric poetry, its DNA remains unmistakably that of someone who has deeply internalised haiku aesthetics: compression, suggestion, emotional restraint, and confidence in silence.

It demonstrates that haiku is not merely a form but a way of seeing.

A consistent poetic voice

Across the collection, what impressed me most was not simply the quality of individual poems but the consistency of Vaultonburg’s voice. There is a recognisable intelligence behind the observations. Humour appears without becoming whimsical. Emotion emerges without sentimentality. Nature is present throughout, yet it is never reduced to decorative scenery or empty seasonal reference.

Instead, the poems repeatedly reveal moments where landscape, perception and human experience intersect.

Modern English-language haiku continues to evolve, and Vanished Roads embraces that evolution rather than policing artificial boundaries between genres. Some poems would comfortably appear in haiku journals. Others lean towards senryu. Still others move into compressed contemporary lyric while retaining unmistakable haiku ancestry.

Rather than weakening the collection, this flexibility gives it its character. The poems never feel like exercises in definition.

They feel, unsurprisingly, like poems.

Verdict

Vanished Roads is an immensely satisfying collection that rewards both casual reading and close study.

Its physical production reflects genuine respect for poetry as an art object. Its design encourages slow reading. Its illustrations complement rather than compete with the poems. Every production decision suggests care rather than economy.

More importantly, the poems themselves possess an unmistakable voice.

Vaultonburg writes confidently across the shifting borders of modern haiku, senryu and short lyric poetry without becoming constrained by debates over taxonomy. The collection is observant, humane, quietly humorous and emotionally intelligent. Even when individual poems move beyond strict haiku conventions, they retain the compression, suggestiveness and trust in the reader that define the best work influenced by the Japanese tradition.

In an era when so much short-form poetry can feel interchangeable, Vanished Roads possesses something rarer: a coherent artistic personality.

That, more than any adherence to formal definition, is what makes the collection memorable.

Highly recommended.

Read Sean Wright's review at These Haiku

Read Magedah Shabo's review of Vanished Roads 

Five Poems By David Spicer

David Spicer has poems in Santa Clara Review, Reed Magazine, Synaeresis, Hamilton Stone Review, Alcatraz, Gargoyle, Yellow Mama, Flatbush Review, Circle Show, The Phoenix, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of Everybody Has a Story and five chapbooks; his latest chapbook is From the Limbs of a Pear Tree (Flutter Press).

DANCING WITH ANGER

for the Purple Bike Lady

Tell me, friend, is Australia angry?

America is. I don’t know why—it has everything:

natives’ stolen land,

enslaved black people,

brown children separated from their parents,

despised yellow people laying ties.

The lynched are angry—their ghosts haunt our history.

Tycoons are angry. I don’t know why—they’re billionaires.

Yes, I do.

Anger, do you have daddy issues?

Do you wake up red-faced every morning

because he favored your brother Jealousy

with his purple-green face?

Did he egg on your sister Fear to boss you?

Did you ever try to please him and couldn’t,

so pimples grew on your cheeks?

Do you adore your cousin Revenge, Anger?

Do you have a heart that’s made of testosterone?

Someone told me Anger is bad for my heart.

My heart isn’t angry.

My brain’s angry.

Angrier than white men losing power.

Angry as innocent inmates with jackal mentors.

Angrier than hungry farmers.

Angry as a girl trapped in a boy’s body.

Angrier than an amputated marathoner.

Angry, like caterpillars sacrificed for butterflies.

Angrier than mothers who’ve buried ten children.

Angry as the man trapped on the moon because he’s lonely.

The man in the moon had a family.

Sometimes I’m angry I don’t get laid enough. That saddens me,

more than a melting chocolate ice cream-ginger-ale float.

more than gazing at the Guernica figures contorted

and cubed in their shades of sad silver, immortal.

Why do you exist, Anger?

Are you Love’s surrogate?

I was born angry, I arrived in the doctor’s cupped hands

ass first just before he spanked it.

But that pissed me off less than my old man’s belt slapping my

butt bending over the bathtub.

Did you have anything to do with that, Anger?

It hurt worse than my mother making me kiss a cactus.

I love you, Anger.

You’ve led me into the clouds like a zeppelin.

I can breathe you, Anger, guiding me, a kite over the Burj Khalifa.

I love an angry woman, too.

Anger’s kept her heart pumping like an overheated generator.

She lives for tomorrow to kiss her like no man can.

Have you looked forward in Anger?

I love you, Anger.

You’ve helped me survive like a commando in quicksand.

He was pure then, a long-haired chanteuse with an eight-girl band,

jet-black hair flowing like Niagara Falls at midnight

with the man in the moon watching.

By the way, the man in the moon’s still angry at the sun

for stealing his light.

Poor man in the moon.

Anger, will you plant a smacker on his mouth sometime?

Will you lead me to the confessional

and help me forgive my little brother’s molester?

Guide me to holy water that tastes like grace?

Anger, I’m done dancing with you:

not another cha-cha about my mama,

no more twists of my psyche—

we’ve tangoed too many times.

You’ve possessed me long enough, my man,

King of the blues guitar I’ve played all my life.

a n t e l o p e

Over poker a hunter told a tall tale:

I knew a woman so fast she was never late

She said she wouldn’t have a wedding just elope

The next guy decided to up the ante

Well, I loved a woman so fast she’d peel

off her clothes in 15 seconds with a rose petal

I passed and rubbed my head like a teen-

age handyman who can’t find his plate

compacter much less his duct tape

The lean blonde dealer with smooth skin tone

said, Guys, I’m so fast you didn’t hear my cards pant

foreman 

Everybody on the assembly line believed in Ramon

the boss we all liked with his legendary name

King of the hours and lord of this bottle factory manor

when he recited a prayer we chanted an Amen

Ramon our burly master of the conveyor belt form

solving personnel problems far and near

We asked to work less he wanted more

we whined then relented out of fear

Sometimes we clacked bottles and he rocked out the clock from

his hellraising heart and red guitar that bolted like a wild mare 

After all Ramon was a roadie not a Ramone

q u e r u l o u s

To hear them tell it, I’m ugly, mean, and sour

as underwear soaked in pickle juice. Family lore

tells it that once I ate a long-stemmed rose

because my wife said I didn’t know what eros

meant. They all laugh at me, call me a user,

but every one of them has a stinking soul

that smells like a tarred-and-feathered louse.

Yes, I whine like a beat-up punk, I fret, but I rule,          

pouty patriarch I am, aware of my role.

I’m the King of Sore, that’s for damn sure,

and when I’m happy, they call me Loser.

j a c k k n i f e

i carry it whether i’m in a café

or in a bath house with my fiancé

i feel safe as a birthday cake not fake

like a clod named Bobby Jack

whose face was a mask of gravel-acne

he knew I knew he was a fink

then one day he kicked my dog Jane

in her big tummy with his red Nike

i said man that wasn’t nice

you’re lucky you carry that cane

I aimed Skinny at his neck

Note: The preceding anagram poems were written in the style of

Terrance Hayes.