rob’s cottage weekend ride 1b
I write a lot. In fits and starts. And I struggle to find words to describe motorcycle riding. This is a prose poem, which is a style I don’t normally write in.
Listen to the spoken word by clicking on the audio player or read the words below.
1b
by susie
© 2022
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1b
we meet in a timmy’s parking lot of course because where else do bikers go except to some kind of nirvana whenever and wherever they ride and that’s how it is with rob’s 1b, which comprises a triad – two experienced riders and newly minted me for whom the road is fast and furious at first until a hairpin changes everything and suddenly trees and fields, light and shadow, gentle rushing air, bliss and bends in roads and rivers, bridges to cross, slopes to climb, stops to slow down to, stuff to notice – a june bug, for example, living in the wrong month entirely dies with a sharp crack on the temple of my helmet, but no pungent skunks are black-and-white roadkill on gravel shoulders today, no, not today, but perhaps tomorrow, in the meantime i savour the combined throaty growl and sweet rumble of the pair in whose wake i trail while a blinding sun swings low on the horizon and, as if in a winter storm, i follow their tail lights hoping that no deer or duck or wtf jumps out at them or me because there’s nothing between three blind mice and brakes and swerves and deadly curves but amazing grace and yet, still and strangely, i have faith and feel safe with my rider brothers and I know i will cry when we arrive because i am already and then i trade one embarrassment for another by tipping over instead. ‘but it was in slow motion,’ they say. ‘it was graceful’ they add. and so we conspire to end 1b, in the shade of a tree, with a drop, some smiles and a little-white-lie-telling spree
© 2022 Susan Macaulay. I invite you to share my poetry and posts widely, but please do not reprint, reblog or copy and paste them in their entirety without my permission. Thank you.
