Boneshaker

Not to need a horse, or have to wait for a carriage,

To slip away, jut away, pedal off

On a whim or in a fury, without permission or charge,

With nothing but wind and pebbles,

Cumulus dust or a heckle of driven rain,

In knickers or barn bibs-and one day, bloomers -

Out of the sweltering clan, fetid farmhouse,

Loose on a lane of poplars upright as gendarmes,

Churning rutted roads speckled with poppies,

Grazed by pheasant or hare,

Into night, if need be, or dawn's lavender light

Before anyone checks the beds,

Out of the argument, or the sermon,

To the spokes and wheels, the steering bar and column,

The wooden seat seared to the tailbone,

The spinal S a serpentine lash

In a field of raspberries unglimpsed from trains,

Something idiosyncratic, shaped by will

And fueled by muscle, a boneshaker

Taking its rider away - there! - or anywhere.