qarrtsiluni

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.

by Kay McKenzie Cooke

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