Life’s in neutral then you shift into first gear, cruising, roll the stop sign at the end of the street. You head into the curve that winds up the hill past the tractor graveyard. Hitting second then third. The bike howls. You open her up, hitting fourth as you crest past the cornfields that turn into a parting sea of green. You are really moving now; the wind tilting the mirrors as you come to the dog that sits just before the main drag, and the abandoned red truck with the white grill that smiles like an aboriginal in your grade school’s National Geographic. You feel the empyrean, pure fire, climbing through the bluing exhaust pipes, up the frame, up the handlebars, up into your shoulders, up into your ears. You hear the earth calling from under you and the chewing sound as it turns. All these things scrunched up inside of you. You’re crazy you say. Just nuts. Just letting it out. Then you’re gone.
1972 Harley-Davidson Shovelhead
(35.9676498, -78.8104714)
*****
Photography Credit; The author
Joseph Rakowski’s short stories are forthcoming in Driftwood Press, and have been published by Grist, The Carolina Quarterly, Witness Magazine, New South, The Antigonish Review, The Normal School, New Ohio Review, Litbreak Magazine, The Baltimore Review, and elsewhere. His writing is available at www.josephrakowski.com.
