The love potion flask
All day chalking out patterns;
tacking lapels and kick pleats.
Every evening cranking up through
the gears – a Tag-Relay on the track,
or a Time-Trial into that East wind.
And on a weekend it’s an Endurance:
organising the girlfriend
to make up enough sarnies;
to be at the right Feeding Station
at the right time; to mix plenty of sugar
in every water bottle; to hold them just so,
her arm straight; not to flinch
as he trams past gasping, stuffing
sarnie into mouth, spare into back pocket,
bottle into cage. The hours flickering
past in hedgerows. The lanolin – slapped
inside his shorts at dawn – leaking
into the weary saddle till, eleven hours in,
207 miles under his belt, a personal best beckoning
in the final blur of light over Little Fransham,
a slick bend brings him down – loose gravel thick
inside a knee, one elbow a knob of snapped bone,
and her a panicked flag of seersucker
running out of the gloom with a tartan thermos.
Char March