I rode a bike at speed
with letters and cheques, tickets and fines,
the dying art of pen. I carried the word
of commerce and law, money and verse. A mad dash
thick with smog, deadly with car. I rode at metal
and juggernaut bus, the copper with a truncheon,
prodding. Then a rest on a bench
or an alley by a church, as I read about frogs
and wounded gods, the bear with a bone
dig a hole through a wall. Riding on the Strand,
watching for the vans and the hitman cabs,
I thought about wind in a stand of pine. How the pike
hang gold in a pond at dusk. The city roar
gone for a line on a page.
