The Red Bicycle

When I was six, I unwrapped a bicycle
as red as the goo in a Jammy Dodger.
My feet were unwilling to pedal, still connected
to the ground like webs between windows
in the wet. The day was grey,
and the world still
small. You never taught me about gravity;
that going down
-hill always means lonely circles.

The treads lost their definitions at the weekends
and the bare screws pock-marked rust
between the years. Spiders wrote of
old words and choruses in their webs,
wise words I couldn’t read.

Later you saw me racing like a child
twice my age, fearless and perhaps a little
fictional? Sometimes when the clouds rained
reality in grey, you told me about the Amazons
and their feather-tail boats.

The bicycle, growing smaller, kept collecting
spiders between its webbed spokes,
spinning through years faster than a storm
through Neverland. You’d forget
my ABCs, paint the letters back into your greyscale,
and like bad songs on the radio,
blame it all on how ignorance breeds
among the young and stupid.

Your face fell into photographs
and late birthday cards,
rather than days with capital letters.

I remember a tower made of satellite dishes,
watching with a swollen smile amid blink
-ing lights, red and green, through the car windows,
and I remember you said you’d race me
one day in the past, long before
I knew how big the skies could be,
and when it rained and rained and rained.

(Revised: 25/01/11)