Sunday, September 22, 2024

Sidecar (revised '24, previously published)

Outside a rec hall dance

in Devon, a Brit invites this Yankee 

yardbird in a Harley hat to drink


homemade rum.  My hangover clears 

in winter air whipped by a Triumph’s 

rush through roads carved 


into moors.  As an enclosed double-

seater sidecar rocks my new 

friend’s wife and three daughters— 


five, seven, and nine—café 

racers wheelie past.  After 

kilometers, harried, the Scottish mom

punches Plexiglas; I’m obliged.

Better than a tilt-a-whirl, the sidecar 

bucks while English uplands scroll 


across windows.  The girls clamber 

front to back, climb their guest

in a joyful rumble.  At a barn converted

to a pub, we eat pasties and drink
Guinness.  Beneath a quilt of kids,

I doze as we cycle into dusk.

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