Boneshaker
Not to need a horse, or have to wait for a carriage,
To slip away, jut away, pedal off
On a whim or in a fury, without permission or charge,
With nothing but wind and pebbles,
Cumulus dust or a heckle of driven rain,
In knickers or barn bibs—and one day, bloomers—
Out of the sweltering clan, fetid farmhouse,
Loose on a lane of poplars upright as gendarmes,
Churning rutted roads speckled with poppies,
Grazed by pheasant or hare,
Into night, if need be, or dawn’s lavender light
Before anyone checks the beds,
Out of the argument, or the sermon,
To the spokes and wheels, the steering bar and column,
The wooden seat searing the tailbone,
The spinal S a serpentine lash
In a field of raspberries unglimpsed from trains,
Something idiosyncratic, shaped by will
And fueled by muscle, a boneshaker
Taking its rider away—there!—or anywhere.
Let’s admit it: some mornings, the walls of our own homes seem to be closing in and it’s hard to draw a deep breath. We feel the urge to take a sledge to the locked door and dash for the open road. Fear not, I can help: Teresa Cader’s poems do not tolerate hard boundaries; they seem to slip past restrictions with the ease (and sly exuberance) of an April breeze. No need for the sledge, though – Teresa’s language is equipped with the delicate picklocks and pliers to set us loose. Even if you didn’t already know that ‘boneshaker’ was a term applied to the early bicycle, the poet has us mounted up and peddling, gusts whipping our hair, as we glimpse the sorts of moments we might have missed in our old fast-paced existence. Teresa’s career was launched when Guests won the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America; and the two collections that followed were equally acclaimed, bringing her a slew of prestigious honors. But what is most relevant here is that the poems themselves have the ability to transfer that gorgeous momentum to us as readers, powering dreams of our own beautiful escapes.