Biker Girl

Biker Girl


Yes, your bike poem
knocked me off my bike stand while I too
reminisced about the early days
of my own rolling adventures.
It jogged my memory back to 1954 and 1955.

Not always such idyllic experiences
for me though.
I fell often riding down hills too fast,
and developed an early dislike
of that special combination of gravel,
blood and scraped skin fragments
that more rugged kids ignored
as the secret badge of the racing athlete.

No pleasure for this delicate, underweight,
joy-of-her-father, young bloomer.
I would march past my mom with a stiff lip,
but would than dissolve into real tears
in front of my dad when he later
came home from work,
as I recreated the horrid spectacle
of the accident, bringing up in hiccuped,
angry sobs how my bike had no brakes
except in the peddles, and so
I couldn't flash down the hills like the boys did
(and that one chubby girl)
with my feet out wide like a flying nun,
because their English style bikes
had the advantage of brakes in the handle bars!

Not only was that not fair,
but the thick heavy tires did not allow me
to escape the two HUGE dogs
who would chase me on weekends
when I hefted my heavy wheeler up the road
past their hedge.
Not only did I never know whether
they would attack one time, but not another,
singly, low to the ground,
or doubly to increase their brotherly
pleasure as they snarled at my thick,
sluggish tires, and worse, my chompable ankles
as...you guessed it, I pushed furiously
at the peddles to get past their animal range.


Susan Gilmour December 2009