Photograph by Chris Sims
Lots of lovely poems and only one winner – this week it is is Sue Spiers with I saw a bike love poem. Thank you to everyone who entered and voted.
Poem 1
The Wheels of Time Turn
Six robin outfits strut
on New Year’s Eve,
bobbing and singing to the Welsh
sheep, shepherd and dog.
Cascading fireworks fling
strangers to each others arms
and undying love
struggles in wet knickers on the falling tide.
Stars flicker and wink at tired children
as they loll and dribble
on the shoulders of yesterday
and the crowd sinks lower in the
streets of the dawning day
and cats paw cans down the alleys
of another year.
Angie Butler
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Poem 2
Mountain Bike Blues
Too tired to wheel on by, I slowly brake,
skid-stop on paths long walked to share heart-ache.
These woods, or “The Cut” is where I come to grieve,
we connect, I weep; trees creak and shed leaves.
The wind blows our tears away; natures rake.
Chain-lock the frame to a deep rooted stake
and then retrace the steps we used to take,
pedalled emotions are wiped on my sleeve;
too tired to wheel on by.
By rotting camp and scattered ash, I shake-
place songs inspired by Cohen, Cave and Drake;
the wind blows cold on my split-knuckled nieve.
Quick-release skewer, memories to retrieve
but the shock won’t absorb when I’m awake
and I’m too tired to wheel on by.
Tomas Bird
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Poem 3
I Saw a Bike Love Poem
I had cause to think of you today,
remembering how much I wanted you;
cycling along Dilly Lane
bare legs brushing past cowslip hedges,
midges getting caught in my hair,
breathless, pedalling
up the incline, bumping over mud
tractors clumped by the fields,
pulling in past the milking parlour
with its pungent smell;
the herd urgently lowing their need,
propping the bike by the collie’s kennel
trying to look unflustered,
hoping you’d want me too.
You probably only saw the sweaty girl
who traded jokes and kicked your shins.
Sue Spiers
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Poem 4
World’s wheels
Wheels move the world,
From a bike’s mechanical advantage
To a hard drive’s digital scatter
To an engine’s infernal combustion
To CERN’s radial collision.
Only now in the latest technology
Is motion made in solid state
Or, soon, maybe, quantum physics will bring to us
The unwheeled reality of uncertainty.
Otherwise, for centuries, wheels have moved us,
Powered us, broken us, carried us,
From carts to cars, tortures to tours.
The world turns, endlessly cycling
Through the universe
Gravity controlled,
Ever closer to its destiny,
A speck on the spoke of time
Between the black hole hub
And the galaxy’s star shot rim.
For now, while we quaff a pint and pie,
Wheels rest in alien, solid state.
Soon we’ll turn again against gravity
And make for the timeless, certain mountain.
Michael Docker
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Poem 5
From grass fields to concrete road,
compact village to a cramped city,
bamboo fences to brick walls,
bullock carts to exquisite cars,
parched fields to skyscrappers,
the three brothers saw all, from
colorful tricycles to grey bicycles,
a journey to start, seemed a new cosmos,
yet with hope rekindled,
the life to be led from now on.
Denim Deka
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Poem 6
The Proficiency Test
Sorting through a cupboard long untouched
I come across an old and battered box.
Inside, evidence of a childhood’s progress:
School reports, scout badges, a football medal.
And a certificate showing I had passed,
Aged twelve, a Cycling Proficiency Test.
A memory flares, dormant for decades.
My father’s promise of a new bike
If I should pass the test, and me imagining
The racing machine of my dreams –
Drop handlebars, streamlined saddle
And eighteen Derailleur gears (eighteen!).
The disappointment was inevitable.
Oh, he kept his promise, my Dad.
The new bike arrived, a safe and solid
Regulation model, with lights, pump,
Saddlebag and three-speed Sturmey Archer.
A fine bike; I could see only what it was not.
I rode it dutifully for years
Until motor-bikes, then cars took over.
At some point the bike was lost, and with it
My lingering, unreasonable resentment.
It returns to me now, but shamefully; a sense
Of a test of emotional proficiency, failed.
David Prior
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Poem 7
Wheels within Wheels
Those who made the models of the universe
Now gracing spacious galleries and halls
In Greenwich Maritime could never dream
Of all those cogs and wheels, rings, circuits, sprockets
And ratchets with clotted chains so finely toothed and tuned;
Could never comprehend the complex modern bicycle.
Yet the cosmos spins along its merry choreography
For all our lack of grasping, mapping it.
And you do not have to understand the ticks and flicks
Of turning wheels—thank heaven’s high and sparkling host
(Which Ptolemy and Halley approached with such humility)—
To mount up in the saddle and wobble
Waggle, pedal giddily away
Down Ashford Road
At five years old
With a whole wide world,
A giggling universe bowling,
Unfolding under your circling feet,
Your starry, shining eyes.
Lizzie Ballagher
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Poem 8
| Lost Youth
Peaceful years before the carnage returned One day a week Respitefrom toiling on the factory floor Young chums cycled Joyfully Oblivious to the gathering dark clouds of war.
Peaceful years before the daily grind of work Replaced by the hell that was Dunkirk The golden age of cycle club rides Vanished that September day when all hopes for peace died. |
Carol Mills
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Poem 9
Time Trials
I used to do time trials on the A1079,
My racing bike was sleek and lightweight ,
Although never the fastest, I was doing fine
Cycling the Wolds and vales with mates.
Now the bike gathers dust on a rusted spike,
Resting unused in the corner of my garage .
It’s been replaced by matching mountain bikes ,
We cycle country lanes demurely in marriage ,
With time to ponder, talk, or wait
To catch our breath, enjoy the view,
To lean the bikes, sip water by a gate
And watch the young speed by like youth’s adieu.
Cycling still has capacity to restore
Vitality of life, peddled with the one I adore.
Clint Wastling
