My thighs hug your hips, and your Harley cradles us
on this greenest of green mornings,
moist air promising intense heat by noon.
I hang on to the Softtail’s seat strap
look up at red-tailed hawk, then at white feathers
that escape from the base of your helmet, flutter in the wind,
beckon my tongue.

Scenery evokes winsome calendar paintings,
giveaways at local feed stores and gas stations:
Faded fence posts, cultivated fields and century barns holding hay and secrets.
Work shirts held captive on clothes lines. Children hunched over vegetable gardens.
Cast-off car parts, useless trailers and bald tires that rise as
primitive sculptures with open trapezoids of blue sky,
yellow wheat and Queen Anne’s lace.

A tractor plods past us, driver lifts steering wheel finger
in disinterested salute. The undulating black ribbon pulls us forward
like an airport walkway without concessions.
We come upon a clearing. A dignified doe looks up from
the center of a low grassy patch. Framed by soft green pine,
I imagine her grace at our cabin, encircled in gold leaf
sunlit from west-facing windows.
I implant the vision between my road-rattled ears.
Leather cushion comfort gives way to throbbing tailbone.
Hunger for the road is banished by longing for
tavern ham and cheddar on salty rye, a frosty Leinie’s.

The last long curve leads to our shoreline home, and I know
when the weather is right I will ride with you again.
I want the same route until we tire of it. I want to behold the
deer in the clearing and wave to country sculptors and children.
I want to listen to the ghosts in weather-worn farmhouses,
watch wind whip the clotheslines, let new mown hay sting my nostrils and
see young farmers in old trucks throw back their Mountain Dew.

I swing my leg over the back of the bike, unstrap helmet and
welcome the breeze lifting damp hair. You’ll spend the next hour
cleaning chrome, getting our girl ready for the next sojourn.
I conquer the porch steps and pull on the railing to stretch out my back,
thinking we will ride to the end of every county road.

And then ride again.