Sunday, Feb. 27, 2011 - 6:48 p.m.
Big Stink in February
*********************
I was invited to a dinner party
by someone who knows how to cook
and set off by bike at 6 pm
just as the sun was going down
good food
people there who knew
how to actually converse
and the quiet shy people
set themselves back
and just drank
til their skin was swollen & red
but didn;t interrupt
the story tellers
except to go to the bathroom
every 15 minutes
towards midnight I had had enough
and coated up to go home
as I was leaving I peered out the door
into the night
saw that five inches of snow
had fallen since I got there
and the snow ploughs had not
managed to make it to
this remote part of the region yet
As everybody there was drunk
and just drove small compact cars
nobody could pop my bike
in the back and drop me off
I had to ride home for miles in the dark
that was way colder now
and through five inches of snow
Lucky I knew exactly
where I laid my bike down
because it was completely buried
in a blanket of snow
that gave no hint
there was a
black mountain bike underneath
difficult and bad ride home
I fell off several times
no matter how careful I was
but ha ha ' its snow
so it was like landing
in a heap of laundry detergent
and the crash was always silent
But get this,
one car had passed that way
maybe an hour before
and left a pair of ruts
cut through the snow
that only had an inch of snow
and that was somewhat but not much
easier to navigate through.
For some reason
normally hibernating skunks
were awake at midnight
going the same way as me
and there two of them
running just ahead of me
in the somewhat
but not much easier path
following the tire tracks
cut into the snow
on their way out of town
up Nassau Street
towards the
forbidden zone
where I live
I shouted at the skunks
in the dark hoping to
frighten them
so they would scatter
and let me pass
but they ignored me
even as my front tire spun
just inches from their tails-
that one tire rut
was everybody best and only
opportunity to making progress
in a snowstorm.
I realized they were running
as fast as they could
and they realized I was peddling
as fast as i dared
I was a lone giant on a bike
but they had full stink bladders
so nobody had any sort of
advantage over anybody else.
So we carried on
as if we did this sort of thing
all the time..
As it is in all traffic
its safe to assume
nobody wants to hit anybody else
and so there is an
automatic unspoken
courtesy survival factor
in place so nobody does
run into anybody else
Everybody was making progress
so nobody minded.
It was sort of fun
and made the task of
muscle grinding through the snow
more interesting than usual
as our curious parade
passed a very drunk young man
staggering home from some party
I called out " Mush" and pointed forward
with a dramatic gesture
as if I was being pulled along
by two trained skunks
he was very surprised
to say the very least
& slipped and fell
in the snow mumbling
" what the fuck ? "
I turned right on William Street
to go home
and the skunks kept going straight
up Nasseau to wherever they lived
As for he drunk guy
nothing like
a facefuill of snow
to sober up
in record time
