Daivid Kinloch

Scotland

to Robert Crawford

Mountainbike country, miniature monocoque
Of machair and big air, from above
Your cities are velociraptors, twister spools
Of spinergy; yellow jersey country snugged
Finger-tight, a stutter-bump off Europe.

Don Quixote of the derailleurs,
You magnetize the towns and villages
To the maypole of their TV sets;
It birls them on a Tour d'Ecosse,
Encompassing the oddity of every airt and pairt;

Kelso skids on Elgin's peewit bell,
Coll chimichangas up the Butt of Lewis
Dundee breakdances on its bars,
Grins up at the basket of your tiny
Wildflower face: primula scotica,

Kama sutra of freewheeling petals:
Old tech hip-hop, cog-country, nipple
Nation. To love you is just to race you,
Reel serious dirt time through a marram
Grass of spokes: cinemas of the real.


More Scottish cycling poetry! Though I think The Black Bicycle has this beat as a representation of mountain biking here. That said, for imagination, Kinloch's Un Tour d'Ecosse where Whitman and Lorca have a cycle tour of Scotland via Frank O'Hara and Mel Gibson,has to be a winner!