This & That
Ghost Beard It is coldest before the dawn and I am hunch backed Inside my jacket, braced against a recurring shoulder injury, Standing my crank against the rising road That leads up onto the great chalk ridge. Breaths Drop into my toes now. I grunt against cold With the effort. My jacket, a moment before not enough Is now sweating, and my dynamo light dips With my slowing roll against the reality Of the gradient. Rather than striking through the fog My light makes a lesser cocoon, barely picking out Wan grasses that line the road. There is nothing beyond the lifeboat of my presence, the thin line Of being stretches out between low powerlines, The staccato of road markings plucks my wheels and counterpoints the calculation of time and distance I am making to keep myself alert and away from Hallucinations. Still I see things that leap In the fog then fade. That might be a rolling badger Or Batman or a giant dark hand Swinging for me in the gloom. I need To sleep but know I cannot. Stopping Would turn me to ice and while it would dawn soon The warming of the day was hours distant And by then I would be done. And done in Nothing to do but push on, ignore The truculent mental states, treat them like A distant radio. Time to tune out And let the pedals turn themselves. ‘Oh hello!’ Beside me, suddenly, a cheery voice. I jolt in surprise – I had thought My pace was enough that no one would be Sitting on. ‘Hello’ I reply, curt and unwelcoming. My abrupt objection to company on a night like this Might be hard to fathom, but some way back I had decided this leg would be cold and hard And all of the experience would be exclusively mine. Forbearance greed is a sin of the modern adventurer – There is nothing left to be discovered so we must go inwards To find the inhospitable terrain. After ten minutes I realised he was not going away; I sighed and looked t his bike. Cyclists, you will know, often bike watch before They look at the person. You want to know if the rider Is a bore, a chore, or a new friend for life. The truth is never in a marque, but it’s a start . ‘Lovely Mercian’, I say, finding the short phrase Hard to say in my current state of fatigue. ‘This old thing?’ He laughs, a long laugh A very long laugh, so long I wonder how He draws breath. But he is false, the bike looks Brand new, as if the mist had condensed and hardened Into mirror-bright tubes; And everything on his bike Was in silvery twinkle, a hymn to the reflection of light From the crankset to the spokes everything shone As if lit from the inside. An obsessive, I decide One of those who have time to clean bikes and have no life To contrast the joy of riding with. And fixed. Of course he had to be riding a fixed. And in that vein He is wearing wool shorts, white socks, a black and white striped shirt without a jacket. He could be Raphaman But the clothes are old, the shoes have wooden soles 20
Arrivée May 2017 No. 136
By Allen O’Leary (yacf: alotronic) If the bike is an object of perfection the man himself Was its verb. He is a sleek animal, his body still, his legs lithe and light; He is starlight on a bicycle. And stranger yet than the minimal covering Is the fact he carries nothing else. ‘You don’t Carry much’ I say. ‘No need’, he replies and I detect A faint northern accent softened further with a smudge Of welsh. ‘I never get punctures’ he adds As if this were unremarkable. The pace seems To have crept ever so slightly higher and I gasp Out my next words, ‘No route sheet either?’ and he laughs, again without apparent effort, ‘Oh I’ve done this route enough times, I don’t need one.’ ‘Right’ I manage to spit out, and lower my head for A few seconds, long enough to see the paraphernalia That covers my many geared machine; the disc brakes The GPS and its purple line, the spare lights And bar-bag full of just-in-case sweets and a camera and money and everything a man traveling light Could ever need. I feel dirty, morally overburdened Like a banker confronted by the prospect Of empathy. Again the pace lifts – though he seems Not to pedal faster – and I make myself shift up And placate my legs with an empty promise Of rest and jelly babies. The bubble pulls in As the temperature drops with the gaining height And a wind promised for later sends a chilly slap. The fog tightens again, deepens, climbs in To my lungs and festers there, a sobering wash of Anaesthesia. On my tongue the first metallic tang Of the bonk. I can’t keep this up. My breaths Drop ragged towards the fog that blankets the road Feeding it espressos of spittle and blood. Now Three lengths in front he churns on, seeming to offer His wheel. It can’t be long to the top now, or to dawn, So I look to his back mudguard and stand up. Straining with effort, discounting the hundred Of hills to come, willing myself to keep pace With the blur in the fog, I alloy each muscular spasm With will and pride, and grimly hang on. And he starts to chat now, about old rides, about Multiple 1000s; about twilight Nordic adventures and fixing his frame with cheese squares and sweat; About Mont Ventoux fives times in a day, on a fixed Borrowed from a peasant with a basket full Of lavender, charcuterie and a dozen bottles of Vintage Champagne. Everything to do with riding And nothing to do with a life beyond. Where my life Was about days in an office wanting to taste adventure He was always here, pedalling the countryside beneath him – A man without use or want for the ordinary. What manner Of man was this? He seemed like flesh and yet He was so much part of his bike that his bike Had become him. And vice versa. A mix of natures – A hybrid being at once both elegant and obscene. It was then I formed the notion that he was the man Who kept the world turning, that he was fixed Not only in gear but time and space; that our orb Was driven towards another dawn by his ceaseless toil And that I should be grateful. But yet www.aukweb.net
