Thrills

For Jim Walker

It had been years since I'd last seen you.
We took a walk out back, over the hill
that used to moan and rattle with the song
of a tweaked and obedient engine.

You walked me through paths so overgrown
it took you a while to find them, but the ruts
engraved by tires were still there,
permanent as the grooves at finger-joints.

Smacked by weeds higher than my head,
where gnats were making their own weather,
I could hear the pop and blare of your old bike
wrestling with the ground, your Rosinante.

Once you sailed over the bars and broke
both wrists; you showed me the odd bends,
not proudly, like some Finn or Sawyer,
but with a fear that stopped a racer.

You never rode a bike again
but turned your bent for the blur
of sliding landscape and the song of gears
to a little saffron Karmann Ghia

that could stick to curves at sixty
and look blistering in neutral.
That night you missed a deer by inches.
Your foot never touched the brake.