In the hush before summer unfolds,
I taste again the throttle’s quick reply,
that velvet growl rising like thunder under leather,
the wild pulse of power surging through veins of steel and bone.
Have I let it slip away forever? Freedom once lived in the night’s deep silence,
in fields that blurred past like forgotten dreams,
in crane nests balanced on fence-post thrones,
in one stolen breath of sun-warmed hay and pine. A fragment of youth returns unbidden—
those summers when the road belonged to me alone,
when every curve whispered: you are alive,
you are endless. Now the garage stands quiet.
The keys are gone.
Was it wrong to let her go? Or does the heart sometimes need to sell its wildest horse
so it can learn—late, aching, beneath new stars—
that the longing itself
is the truest ride that never ends?
