The Road on Two Wheels

The cars pass on the road and the trees sway
gently in the breeze.  I walk slowly as
my ankle is sore today - I hurt it
along the way.  It is the end of Summer, here,
and my wayward garden is beginning
to think of the long cold months ahead,
the ice and snow.  I don't have far to
go - I have done the long roads of freezing
heart and numbing pain, soles bleeding in
the storm.  The dark, bus-packed days of
window condensation and suffering.  I hear
a motorbike pass and feel the cool
blast of air on my face and my muscles
tense in my limbs as I fly free - how
I love that, me, on my bike in the
Summer air.  All those who are not here
make my throat close.  My poor heart -
patched up with sticky-backed plastic
and string.  I can't squeeze much more
out of this thing called life, this
terrible weight a Pandora's Box of dark
shifting things.  Soon they'll be gone, blown
like seeds in a changeling wind.  I remember
the striping sun on the grass at Wardlaw
Wing.  How privileged I have been.  So
many bright things to hold my arms
cannot contain them, and such a
colourful painting to gaze at, all the
depth and strokes, the shades, the impasto
of it - I did, and did, and did.  The
best I could as I was taught, and,
boy, was I hated for it.  Envy at
excellence has always bitten at my
heels.  Poor Achilles-girl.  
The road on two wheels - at my
beginning and at my end.  Will my
love transcend my bones?  No-one
here knows, and I lost my faith by
the wayside as I travelled, wrested
from my hands like a stolen treasure
by ugly men.  I only have the stars
now, the black Winter sky encrusted
with gems; and the cool Autumn
winds, the scent of turning leaves.  Wood-
smoke in my nose, now as then, and
the crisp silence of Winter snow
(my Dad pushing my bike, bright, bright,
down the wobbly lane in sunny Spring).

My path petered-out through the woods until I rested, here,
in this weird unknown place at the end of
the road.  Soon, the Motherlode
where all things end and begin.  And I will
see her again:  my life's scaffolding -
the sturdy frame that steadied me in the wind and the rain.

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