WHEELS THAT ENCOMPASS THE EARTH

A ride upon two wheels of many thousand miles,
despite the anal migraines and the aching thighs,
the consequential cramps and risk of suffering piles,
imposes a respect for earth's prodigious size,
besides an appetite for swallowing space.

White flashing dashes and the fierce slipstream's embrace
are simply physical: beyond them distance dies
an enervating death till English counties race
in wild kinetic joy. Before you realise
how far you've come, you're in the south of France.

For hours you climb Black Mountain heights; at length a glance
at vertigo, then wild descent as on and on
winds storm against your cycle's vulnerable dance
towards the parapets of distant Carcassonne.
And now you're in Alhambra's watered courts

or in Morocco's world of frangipanni forts
and the medinas where the awninged streets change shape.
Already in St. Catherine's, Sinai, in your thoughts
you climb with Moses to receive the stones. Now scrape
away the hours: zoom down to Petra's rocks

and Syria and Turkey where one day you change brake blocks;
Bulgaria and Romania's village streets laze by,
and Prague and Speyer and Amentières and Calais' docks
return your cycle, battered, to the English sky.
'Why in such hurry to come back?' you ask.