Riding English Racer

Rode the English Racer
Down the hills
On wheels and wings,

Airstream strider
Head down glider,
Angel on my shoulder,

Pressing faster
Getting older
Missed the rock
Swerved the boulder,

Slipping the eddies
Of time and tide,
Swept down her belly
And banked her thighs
With Elliot Bay beside her,

Pumping legs
Splashed up wet
From puddles
In the small of her back,

And the hum and drone
Of slip clopping tires
Slapping staccato
On cobble street stone,

Near the fountainheads
Of holy waters
And the spindrift
Of epiphanous rain,

Slingshotting man
And bicycle
Free and untethered
From the weathered lands
Of loss and sorrow,

Into kingdoms of Camelot
Where men sing the songs
Of the promise of tomorrow,

And gaze the Canterbury Bells,
Come the return
Of English Spring,

When clarions of trumpets
Chorus freedom and justice
And the voices of troubadours ring.