Steve Lang - On Turning Eight

I remember quite distinctly still, my first real bike:
Not the Chopper, gearstick on the crossbar,
Of nappy-headed nyaffs I feared,
Drainpipes, baseball boots, fake Harringtons,
Cursing noisily jawing gum and gobbing on the pavement;
Nor the racer of the older lads- alarmingly thin tyres,
Handlebars recklessly swooping down and
Round and neatly wrapped in tacky tape.

Yet something in the angles of the frame,
A low- slung forward lean perhaps
The relationship of wheels
To each other and the rest,
Suggested she was made for speed.
And then there were the whitewall tyres
That made her quite the apogee
Of my material desires on turning eight.

I rode her far beyond my bounds
And fast as well: I'd lean like Sheene
Into the bends, once leaving layers of shoulder skin
Behind me on the stinging asphalt.
But if I really reached dark Hopetoun tower,
Or silently picked up my bike
And tear-blind wheeled it home,
At this remove of time I can't recall.

But I can't forget that birthday,
With my parents in the bike shop-
Not the sweet new rubber smell,
Nor the wink and gleam of so much chrome-
The sense of speed potential
In rows of close-packed static bikes,
But mostly not my guilty awe
At the love-weight of the sacrifice.

Steve Lang

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/on-turning-eight/