blue Raleigh
Loose-mudguard rattle, sixties’
teal and white
and your faithful charger
on through the seventies
and eighties.
The only thing it guzzled,
your energy. One day
in the nineties
just before you finally
dump it,
the boys and I spot it in town
outside your work, parked
in its usual bike rack,
a donkey in a stable
of mountain-bike
thoroughbreds;
an object of ridicule
and their shame.
Already they’d forgotten
the once-familiar kerklunk
over our driveway’s kerb,
the handbrake’s strangled screech
outside the front door,
those announcements
that you’d arrived
home from work
their cue
to hurl their small bodies
headlong
into your handlebar arms.
Categories: Economy
This is just gorgeous, very well crafted and reads like it flew onto the page. Title poem for next collection … ? ;)
So evocative of a favourite and trusty bike and all that it entails.
Beautiful, Kay. You know my affinity to bicycles and this goes right to the spot
Kay! This is wonderful, and I totally LOVED hearing you read it!