Eulogy to the Redline

  

She may look like any other
To the unnoticed eye
With the same pretty parts:
Two pedals for feet
Two handles for hands.
Though you wouldn’t know
Her look by her name.

Pure black, frame coated
With staid defiance
‘Gainst the whirring
Silver of spokes and gears.
Not a speck of namesake red
To rust its beauty.

After the first look comes his first touch
The metal mane cold from my cruel neglect.
All sadness dispersed with one bounding
Hop over the back and onto the saddle

Readjusting,
he finds the familiar position;
Seat low to dig deep into the pedal.
Breaks squeezed;
They bite at the midpoint,
Not immovable nor empty.
Clicking sound as the foot massages
The crank backwards effortlessly.

With the right leg ready at 1 o’clock
For the downstroke,
The left leaps lightly
Onto the other circular step.

If these details do bore,
Then what sadness I have
To not impart that true love
Which enlivens the mundane,
Paces the heart like mine
In the first moments of our
Momentous reunion.

These moments I ache for, and many more

–
Roaring down the Powell Street corridor
–
Bending space and time
Past the vehicles in line
–

Helmets of mistrust, we would scorn,
Others look with jealous forlorn

But in perfect safety we lived,
Psychic understanding only she
Knew; with it we slanted the
Center of gravity itself,
Holding each other safe, forsaking
The ground beneath our intertwined feet.

The gifts I brought – new grease,
New wheels, new chain –
Repaid always with fresh
Enthusiasm, renewed
our vows to each other,
The lovebirds enjoyed
In the ensuing rides
The honeymoon which recalled them
To the first time they met.

Oh God curse my foolish foolishness!
My careless neglect, she outside
The whole night, enduring the cold,
The loneliness, locked against a pole
Like a dog – the awful truth! –
With a careless owner.
She so divine, treated so low
Deserved so much more, and so with
Heaven and order inverted
In that local kingdom, then true
Heaven and order inverted
Heaven’s natural lease,
(oh what joy old age would have brought!),
And moved swiftly, silently, fatally.

All that was left were the broken
Pieces of a metal far less pure
Than the one it guarded, that last shameful
Reminder cut the psyche like heaven
The lock, and I did wander on foot
Alone, with only my mistakes,
My cruelties, and my idiocies.

So ends, like so many
Others, the woeful tale
Of my first true love.

̻