Poetry In Motion

Do things get..... weird for you... sometimes, inside the full face helmet? Out there alone? Just you, the bike, the wind... the voices.... your voice; your mind focused yet wandering about? My mind wanders when I'm out there.
When I'm in there; inside my helmet.... I log images, or more accurately, glimpses... glimpses of images which often morph into phrases... mental soundbites... Sometimes I build on these. I guess it's how I decompress?
The other day I was out. It was sunny, and as I rode thru the woods on one of my favorite twisty back roads it occurred to me that the trees' shadows falling across the road resembled bar codes- UPC labels.
This, in turn, inspired this short poem:

Silver sunlight
thru bare trees,
vertical shadows
create the illusion of
bar-coded byways

If there's a UPC code
on my favorite road,
I can easily afford
the toll


Oh, but maybe you're one of those who play music inside your helmet to quash those pesky thoughts...
to hold the Voices at bay.

If you let your mind's voice range freely, if the thoughts find themselves beyond the realm of the helmet...
please do share your inspirations.

Here's one I composed a few years back. It became the first verse of a song I wrote called "You Are What You Eat":

The smear on my windscreen, bright yellow and sticky
Turned inside-out, the bug was now icky
As I rode past the field of canola aflame
I realized the color was exactly the same

You are what you eat...


JP

I am not one to come up with such verse, but I do a lot of thinking. Philosophy was one of my favorite subjects in college.

What I do is get enthralled about the beauty around that I see (especially now at this time of year) - especially on back country roads with farm lands. Odors of the trees, farms, cows, etc. all amaze me. I find myself talking (or thinking) to myself about just how beautiful things are and what an enjoyable experience it is to be riding a wonderful old motorcycle and being able to see such beautiful scenery, and hear all the sounds of the machine under me and the countryside around me, and smell such odors as the trees, flowers, animals, and yes, the smell of the oil and the exhaust of the bike I am riding.

It frees up my mind so that I can ponder the great questions in life, and the things that matter most.

It doesn't get any better than that! We only have to wait around 4-5 more months to do it all over again!

I have amused myself on long rides (across eastern Montana and North Dakota on US 2, for example) by singing every Beatles song I could think of. Then every Sinatra song. Out loud, of course, since no one else can hear me, mercifully. No, I don't have a radio or iPod.

Poetry, eh? I may give that a try.

pete

I am inclined to the spiritual side of thinking, therefore my mind tends to wander in that direction. My "best" thought thus far is the simple question, Can God be surprised?

This question has led me in lots of off-center directions, and my religious (not the same as spiritual) friends argue and disagree with me often.