The Bicycle

those were the days when nothing hurt yet, pedalling like a dumb kid through the maize fields of Southern Africa, dust choking the air, wire fences ripping at your legs if you got too close, the sun baking everything into one long stupid dream.

then bam, over the handlebars, eating dirt, picking bloody gravel out of a knee with a filthy twig, digging deep till the wood scraped the nerve and the world went white-hot, Jesus, that hurt, real hurt, the kind you remember when everything else fades.

now I pedal through Cambridge like an old man staying upright by miracle, Mill Road sliding into Parkside, chlorine hitting me like a cheap perfume memory — Mary Jane by the pool, that black speedo tied with a drawstring I never figured out, her laughing while I stood there with no clue.

across Parker’s Piece the coaches belch diesel, London-bound idiots staring out like cattle, and the stink wipes my head clean for a second, thank God.

then into Emmanuel, slow now, geraniums blasting pollen up my nose, a free summer headache, the kind that feels almost like being alive.

and over Victoria Bridge — the great divide, Jesus Green one side, Midsummer Common the other, the sun doing its lazy golden thing across the grass, warm, almost kind. then home, wherever the hell that is anymore.

same knees, same old bike,
maize dust to Cambridge gravel,
still pedalling home.