Not my work, though I wish it was or could be. A poem about the author’s dear old going to work bike “Twab” – (To Work And Back)
Twab’s Day
The patchy chippings please my heavy humming tyres,
Nightly for many years we have rode “our” road.
His legs pulse my tubular steel frame and I compliantly spring.
Going home is what matters most to me, a sudden hesitancy. Then I feel my chain bite, snicking gears and half forgotten joys come as big ring howls: crank bait.
A metallic beating mass is rising, sinews tighten, cables shift and sprockets growl.
The brute force is now measured and my instruction is clear;
Hammer Anvil hard, white sweat in red mist we fly toward a rolling block of ego’s on black carbon beasts: splashed in jersies that wail “He is not this”.
Tuesdays chaingang and we’re on, an exhausted lull, but that heart still booms hammer hard through my every joint.
He grabs the scruff of my bars and we go … he daren’t look around as the road is ours again.
He hears clicking and cursing fall back and my chain bites harder on now black oiled sprockets.
The hill before we turn is no hill: it is to become a monument over their silent embarrassment.
We turn and deliver a final silent message “our” road.
One short voice “Do you race?”
“Yes, on our road”.
