One Poem by Victor Kennedy

 

Ode on intimations of morality

 

I went for a ride on my Sportster this afternoon

I don’t ride it much these days

I filled it up twice this summer

But it was a sunny August Sunday

 

I don’t have a vigneta so I stay off the highway

But the back roads are better anyway

Less crowded

And I don’t feel the need to go fast anymore

Well, sometimes…

 

I used to ride with friends

I enjoyed having a passenger to share the ride

But these days it’s just me

 

I like the way the engine purrs

Growls sometimes

I never felt a need for straight pipes, to share it

With everybody within a mile

 

The click of the gears when I shift

The green of the trees, the blue of the sky

The wind

 

Fifty years ago

I had the same feeling

Riding my BSA

Halfway across the world

 

It was more a social event then

I wasn’t as cautious

I remember doing my first wheelie

And sneaking into the house after midnight

To find my mother waiting up

Cross because I was bleeding on the carpet

 

I fell off a few times in those days

I had a photo somewhere of Marlene

Sitting on the grass at Bluffer’s Park

Laughing beside my Honda 350

She’d fallen off

Just as she was getting the hang of it

 

And then Lori and I lying on the road

in the middle of the intersection at Eglinton and McCowan

Beside my CB750

Where we’d hit some loose gravel in the middle of a left turn

Cars coming the other way

Honking but not stopping

 

Or the time I flew off the highway in upstate New York

I was so tired after a long drive from Toronto

I forgot to put the kickstand up after stopping at the border crossing

It grounded in a sweeping left curve

and my RD400 and I went over the edge into the Saint Lawrence River

A Good Samaritan with a rope stopped and pulled me out

while half a dozen drivers stopped to gawk

 

Now I’m careful

as I ride along, remembering,

thinking, it’s not the same now,

I feel guilty about climate change

and me just joyriding

a bike doesn’t burn much gas

but still…

 

Victor Kennedy was born in Scotland, grew up in Canada, and currently lives in Slovenia. A semi-retired Professor of English Literature, he spends his time writing poetry, walking his dog, and trying to play classical guitar.