Time was away and somewhere else

When the hustle of the day job and the bustle of the season conspire to reduce motorcycling to snatched, infrequent moments, it's hard to maintain a rhythm that flows eloquently onto a page or screen which sets its stall out to be a repository for things bike. As I sit in the study writing this, a thin, apologetic sunlight squirms its way through the leaded panes, offering future promises but for now it is buffeted by swirling, ham-fisted winds that are, according to the radio reports, reaching 70 miles per hour in some northern parts. The yew tree outside the window fights back against the gusts, waving its feathered arms in a flurry of green and gold, swinging haymakers against the elements without landing a single blow. So a red tent covers the camped Ducati, resolutely withstanding the onslaught that threatens to rip the canvas from its fastenings and, no doubt, carry it away over the Pennines to a region where red garments are respected and worn as a mark of sporting allegiance. Discovered laying crumpled in someone's Lancashire back garden or tangled round a swing in a Cheshire park, its fate may be sealed by scissors before the day is out, a false identity proclaimed in white helvetica as Rooney or Torres, without a thought for its Bologna-related intentions, leaving the bike to maintain a dignified, naked silence and long for summers touring Tuscan lanes. For now, there isn't a gap between business and bearings that the bike slips into, no version of Macneice's Meeting Point for it to occupy. It will come again, and soon, bathed in sunshine and wreathed in opportunity, offering licorice bands laid in sweeping arcs across the rubenesque swells of the dales, but not now, not yet.

And so it is with this journal, this blog. Time to sit and write, always a luxury, an indulgence that comes at the expense of endless strategies and spreadsheets, is having its sleeve tugged by other projects that provide excitement and fulfillment not offered by this twenty-first century confession box. My feelings on blogging and bloggers remain polemic and to a certain extent, writing one has been, in part, something of an exploratory experiment. Back here, I mused on the blog as an elongated Christmas round robin. With notable, generally professional or commercial exceptions, I think that's exactly what it is. The devotees may claim purpose, some building rings of false, cyberspace sycophants as they crow about fabricated accolades bestowed upon their labours, but I'm not so sure. Or rather, I think that the purpose many blogs serve is not the purpose they claim. Still, each to their own.

Onwards. Things to do, a business to run, a performance to write, a book to promote, a Ducati to ride and a second to dream of. And so, for now, it ends.


Meeting Point

Time was away, and somewhere else,
There were two glasses and two chairs
And two people with the one pulse
(Somebody stopped the moving stairs):
Time was away and somewhere else.

And they were neither up nor down;
The stream's music did not stop
Flowing through heather, limpid brown,
Although they sat in a coffee shop
And they were neither up nor down.

The bell was silent in the air
Holding its inverted poise -
Between the clang and clang a flower,
A brazen calyx of no noise:
The bell was silent in the air.

The camels crossed the miles of sand
That stretched around the cups and plates;
The desert was their own, they planned
To portion out the stars and dates:
The camels crossed the miles of sand.

Time was away and somewhere else.
The waiter did not come, the clock
Forgot them and the radio waltz
Came out like water from a rock:
Time was away and somewhere else.

Her fingers flicked away the ash
That bloomed again in tropic trees:
Not caring if the markets crash
When they had forests such as these,
Her fingers flicked away the ash.

God or whatever means the Good
Be praised that time can stop like this,
That what the heart has understood
Can verify in the body's peace
God or whatever means the Good.

Time was away and she was here
And life no longer what it was,
The bell was silent in the air
And all the room one glow because
Time was away and she was here.