POETRY KITe ANTHOLOGY

Marta’s bike

.

Marta’s bike arrived folded up in a solid wooden crate

(the kind used for purposeful journeys)

and was unloaded at a dismal terminal on the cold wide Thames

with her books and dreams and leather coat.

.

Marta’s bike, which had been snapped up

by her excited dad

on one of the rare days

when there was stock in the sports store.

.

Marta’s bike didn’t take to England:

the valves were a different diameter,

the man in the shop was offhand

also ater a few outings,

Marta’s bike lay down disconsolate in its big canvas bag,

remembering its teenage adventures,

and resigned itself never again to pedal the route to school,

the housing estate, the woods.

.

Marta’s bike would annoy me.

It took up room in the garage,

once it fell on the car.

It got dirtier and dustier

and seemed stubborn in its refusal - twenty years we’re talking -

to spruce itself up and zip along generous council byways.

The tyres flat, disinterested, as if bereft of self-esteem,

the little leather straps perished with sadness,

the mirror cracked in its longing for home.

.

I was shocked, the other day, when Marta said

she had thrown her bike out.

‘What, you gave it to the bin men?’

Image of its little metal limbs snapped and broken and devoured by huge

.........undiscriminating jaws. Chicken bones, peelings, packaging, polystyrene.

She gave it to the bin men.

‘What, you gave it to the bin men?’

She gave it to the bin men.

Was there a last anguished gasp of those that die in exile?

.

Marta brought her bike to England

but it didn’t take to

our hard-surfaced roads.

.

# posted by June Clitheroll : 12:31 PM