Tony Jolley - Corners

There are corners…and corners:
Some you turn but others turn you.
Some can be seen a mile off in poor visibility at night.
Others….well others you just don’t see coming
Until curve and camber wage their war
Against mass, velocity and vector
And Newton predicts and picks both Victor and Vanquished:
Your hard-won right of choice wrested from your control
And surrendered in a heart-in-mouth second
To the uncaring, uncompromising forces of physics
Which unilaterally determine your terminus
Whilst guaranteeing nothing in terms of your condition upon arrival.

Tight corners and high speed don’t mix
(Especially two-up on the two-tyred ride that is young love) .
Sometimes even a careful corner-crawl
Is no match for a seductive, iridescent sheen of oily advice
Spread ‘helpfully’ across the tarmac by dispensers of four-wheeled wisdom.
Such corners deserve a warning sign:
‘You’re on your own. Only you can ride it to survive it.’

Me, I saw the oil far too late.
I was busy looking 6 or 7 year-miles up the road
(with personal and pillion interests equally weighted and balanced)
For life’s biggest chicanes and hairpins,
When the rear wheel got away from us in slow motion inevitability.
Neither brake nor throttle could stop the slide
Truth to tell: I never tried…

Tony Jolley

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/corners-2/