Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

But though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run - Andrew Marvell

You speed towards the birth, your first,
big as a sedan, that last years sleekness
overtaken by it, and looking at us
now - your belly, serious conversation,
sobriety on the table between us by our cups,
nobody would guess about last summer,
that afternoon starling right here. It’s like this.
Iced coffee, so hot Calgary is,
you with bare legs and floaty miniskirt
planning your year abroad,
and you are bright and giddy this day
and point to the street and say come
on, it’s time for you to drive it,
but I can’t as I stand and look at it,
its sky-blue of my lifelong soccer team,
the top down, leather seats, wood dash,
your Triumph TR6 there, shining,
wailing, but I won’t drive, it would be
somehow too intimate, too rich and big
a thing for me to do, and so I slide
into the other seat, you at the wheel
putting your dark glasses on, checking
those round dials, and I can’t believe it,
how fast the years have raced since I
borrowed my friend Tony Long’s
dark green TR2 at Cambridge, going
to collect exotic Gretchen from her college,
sailing up King’s Parade in second, revs high
to draw attention, for I was young,
and this could be the same amazing car
as you start it up and I buckle in
and stretch my legs deep into the well
until they are straight, and your slender
fingers and thumb caress and ease the choke,
massage it gently to its perfect setting
and your long legs move, sliding,
as you work the stiff long-throw clutch
and throttle, and we’re away now,
your hair blowing, the streaming road just below
my elbow on the door, the guttural
exhaust exciting everything in me and
I’d forgotten how narrow the Triumph is
as just inches away from mine your legs
rub against each other, confident,
hot, and I swear I hear their skin on skin
as you change gears - how remarkably
the world sometimes bestows its gifts -
and tweak us easily through the traffic
with a growl, a wave, a touch of power,
and my smile must be bigger than belief
and you are smiling too for it's wild
in the pulse this special riding
and I guess you feel this elation of mine
but can’t know quite how deep it goes
with that earlier ride mixed up now
with this one, and your sunlit legs,
your skirt as high as it can go,
and I swear to all that’s hot and crazy
that the sun is growing bigger all the time
and dancing as it chases us round the streets
and you’re driving me, driving me
crazy with everything, with this
and all those years ago when I
was in this same seat - right hand drive -
as I am now, and again I see
you touch the choke and then all
of a sudden it nearly happens, me
not thinking, thinking left years behind,
and I start to drop my left hand down
on to your thigh the way I did
with Gretchen, though then I got thrillingly
laughingly tangled in her dress and puffy
petticoats, actually raise it and move it down
but that was then, and different with her,
and I only just stop myself now, I’m
only just in time, and I think what if you
saw it start, that nothing but casual, supremely
natural movement of my hot hand,
and I guess that you know I nearly did that
as you smile and on and on we go,
today and in memory, a generous woman,
blown hair, a car alive all around me,
the sense that all at once I’m free from myself
to be the self I think I never quite became
as the exhaust throbs throatily and echoes
and people stare and you suddenly speed up
and it will be over far too soon
as I yell out loud at the spinning sun
which again I swear is getting bigger
and you laugh, slicing your legs,
those soft magnets for my eyes, and I sense
in all of this a holy exultation,
a sudden, perhaps final, blessing from somewhere,
a wild collusion far outside time’s gripping,
feelings wide open for just this hour,
and the sun gets hotter and I care nothing,
nothing at all as you turn to me and smile,
that hey, hey-ho, this day and that day
before, elected and elated, I’m riding
fast and oh so hard towards my dying.