Jacob’s Ladder

those gleaming silver travellers of the tar, holy rollers deserting me like faithless friends hitching rides to wilder horizons. they vanish into the night or the blistering noon, tumbling free while I loop the same grimy industrial estate, the same sharp corners, round and round.

it’s their one breakout, and I almost envy it – I ease the rattling heap around a bend, brakes whispering soft as a lover’s goodbye, and bam, one’s gone: spinning wild on its axis, faster than the whole creaking beast, a dervish unchained from the axle, dodging the thundering semis that could smash it flat.

yesterday, in Trafford Park’s summer blaze, one bolted like a thing set loose, shot down the road at 25mph, hopping the pavement like it was climbing some mad Jacob’s ladder, bouncing skyward in pure repentance for all those miles of going nowhere, chasing paradise in one frantic leap.

then winter, windows iced shut against the bite, heater belching rusty heat into my face. I hear them muffled now – the skitter and groan as they skid on the slick roads behind me, ghostly in the gloom. eyes fogged, stinging from salt and blast-furnace air, I peer through the haze for that last sparkle, and there it is: the carcass in the gutter, caked in sludge, run over by trucks that never paused to grieve.

each lost cap’s a little death, lightening the car, and me with it. I stopped replacing them, what’s the use? the ride sheds bits the same as I do, scraps detaching sudden, rolling off faster than you can chase. just plastic, you’d say, a tacky disc. but no, it’s the thing that dressed the wheel, hid the raw bolts and the grime, made the machine look whole instead of fraying at every seam.

one more silver disc
climbing its ladder of air –
gone, and the car lighter.