Fortuitous it was not,
reaching Wansfell Pike with bloody pedals.
Blisters raged blood from a stone
beyond Jenkyn’s Crag.
All Windermere, like a map, spread out.
Woodland wandering, bare rock, delightful.
That long trudge into Troutbeck,
no time to pause at The Mortal Man,
Old Rosie’s best, a shade of pink.
Hellish, climbing, kitted out;
that bloody solicitor drunk
on a late lunch/fat fee.
Stumbling to the heights, all earth in 360o:
pretty please, no BPPV here.
Pathetic idiot of a solicitor, cycling my resources
up a mountain. Munro…more likely.
Blame the drunk, peddling humour at
solicitor’s long lunch. The drunk, my pater,
releasing funds conditionally:
for his one and only.
Sobering, that, leaving the Big Smoke,
weekend cycle racing clearing head.
Would I spend real estate on mountain bike?
Idiopathic, contemplating pedalling Cumbria.
Bloody pedals leaving solicitor’s drunk’s final
instructions: pedals up Wansfell Pike, else
generous donation to Battersea Dogs’ Home.
Backpack painful every bloody step; pint
in The Mortal Man… photographic evidence
for that sober solicitor. No idiopathic benign
paroxysmal positional vertigo repeat.
No pater, just spirits relaxing.
Wendy Webb from the North Midlands, UK, prolific poet, published with Reach, Sarasvati, Quantum Leap, Crystal, Seventh Quarry, The Journal, Frogmore Papers, Acumen and online through Wildfire Words, Littoral Magazine, Lothlorien, Atlantean, Poetry Wivenhoe, Drawn to the Light (Ireland), Seagulls (Canada) and Autumn Voices, and local radio on Poetry Place.