Bicycle + (∞ asphalt + √ speed + sand x000) = crash (cut knee x hot water = 3 agony)
‘Falling off a bike is not a good experience, but it does improve your cycling skills.’
‘I am battle-hardened.’
‘I need to go to physiotherapy to learn to walk again.’
Henry Homer, aged 15, Thursday 8 March 2007
To Mathematics tuition yesterday afternoon
to study plus and minus indices,
the tyres whirring on the asphalt, in tune
with the birds of the breeze
in the hurting sun, high and hot.
A post-lunch shower, then two forty-five went by,
he went out in the full sun, with three
or four pals, to work out if the horizontal was a or b, or x or y
algorithm in rigidity
in the hurting sun, high and hot.
Not too slow, that’s what he told me, but not too fast
when tyre went on strike, refusing to grip
in the full sun’s late pm blast,
he heard, and felt, the road rubble rip,
in the hurting sun, high and hot.
Going along the sandy, asphalt top
the bike then went collapsing to the right,
in a turning, mechanical bop,
gripping the sweating handlebar tight
in the hurting sun, hot and high.
The others laugh in a non-mean way
out a scraping skin, wincing
as kneecap matches the road top to play
a biting accent as the sting goes in, pinching,
in the hurting sun, high and hot.
Back home to tell me of the prang, in quiet mourning,
the knee cap pouring a lick of blood; I watch
the trouser roll up to exhibit the pawning
of the skin for a rough scrape-graze blotch,
in the hurting sun, hot and high.
My group too, in anguish; one girl, left by mother, crying.
I try to find out what is wrong, but they don’t, they can’t tell me.
I make a chant, they join in; it works, laughter, but it’s trying.
We talk of plants and animals, invertebrate, fly, mosquito, bee
in the hurting sun, high and hot.
Now, the next afternoon’s setting light is getting near;
take 10 pm coach for a capital two-night break
from the coast, to watch the highlands chill appear
in pewter and tea point in time; but I ache
in the hurting sun, hot and high.
The amah whips up nasi goreng; the wok
on the metal ring, rice-freeing scraper bang
in perpetual, cheap, gamelan harmony; then, knock
in chopped fish ball, carrot, garlic; a rough, pungent tang
in the caring sun, warm and gone.
