beeline (another love poem to Manchester)

the city is flat, built of red brick on a floodplain. the bicycle is yellow, with slim speedy road tires. they skim through puddles, spin over bridges, alongside canals, and on the long ride through mosside to work in early morning

(past where the buildings briefly retreat, the horizon widens and the first rays of sun slant across sky – directly over a church, which always amuses her)

if you scare a child, her ability to grasp information or to concentrate collapses for some time. if you herd a child ahead of you in unfamiliar places with sharp words and rough hands, then demand the impossible – that she find her way back – the internal compass, spinning crazily, cannot point to safety, or home, or north

the remedy requires a couple of decades, an ocean of distance, a bicycle, and, perhaps, the colour yellow

yellow, for the sweetest asago mangoes from longsight market. for smoggy sunsets seen from a 9^th floor flat in hulme, for all the warning lights she’s pedalled through. yellow for the bee, symbol of industry, painted on poles and gates and benches throughout the city. and bees don’t fly in straight lines. they jig, they sway, they notice bright colours along the way, and yes, they do get to where they’re going.

so it happens one evening, in this flat city built of red brick on a floodplain, in its northern quarter – a blaze of street art in primary colours, amidst a maze of cobblestone lanes and tattoo parlours and independent record shops: something stops spinning. it’s nothing dramatic. hang on, let me get my bearings. just something she’s not said before. and a beeline forms. between two sides of an ocean. between nine and twenty-nine. between her body, a yellow bike, and her way home.