O Rancho Seco Cycle Track, we hardly knew ye
For if not signed so strangely as above
We’d never thought you were designed
To be a Cycle Track like this

No drivers did, for they did zoom
Into the Wendy’s unaware
Mere faded stripes indicated “protection”
Along your 227-foot gentle curve.

No, you were never given chance
To be authentic, o Rancho Seco Cycle Track.
So by your death thy cyclists sing, made safer
Peering onto your curb-ed grave.

And closer still, remembering that
Keats once sang soft to a Grecian urn
Filled not, methinks, with striping shards.

Yet we fondly gaze upon ye remains
Despite your pointed pointlessness
For like that film of Coen fame
was Donny thrown, badly, in strange respect
Toward the wind, and briny deep.

So too, Rancho Seco Cycle Track
You shall remain eternal thus
Example of what not to do
when implementing safer roads;
For all will recall and forever say’st:
“Physical separation is truth; truth, physical separation – that is all
Ye know in roadway engineering and all ye ever need to know.”