Ghost Riders of Winter

By Jeffry L’H. Tank

On one of the motorcycle forums I belong to they recently started a group called Rounders for folks, who like me, ride pretty much year around regardless of cold weather conditions. As it turned out during the first week of February I got caught in a snow shower on my way home from one day. When I got home I started on a poem about riding during a snow storm. After writing it I realized that it fit very well the theme of the newly formed group and posted the following message to the board including the poem and how it came about and changed direction as I wrote it. So I decided to make that my theme for this months article and have included the posting and the final version of the poem below.

Reprinted from the BMWMOA (BMW Owners of America) forum.
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Like the old fool I am I listened to the weather man last Wednesday, Feb. 2nd, who said a slight chance of RAIN (nothing about SNOW) so I rode the bike to work as usual. Around Noon I noticed that it had started snowing even though it was only supposed to rain, chalk up another one for the "whether" man! Around 1:00 I decided to cut out early since I didn’t want to get caught if it started to stick to the roads. As it turned out, even though the snow was coming down at a pretty steady rate with those big puffy wet flakes that tend to build up quickly it didn’t ever really stick to the roads so the ride home was actually kinda nice.

There is something magical about riding in a snow storm, if, as I said, it’s not sticking to the roads and making driving a road bike hazardous. When I got home I started on a poem about the ride that at first was just going to be about riding in the snow, somehow though, as it often turns out with my writing, the poem took on a life of it’s own and turned into something more about the circular nature of life, how one event leads to the next and then back again to a beginning that is linked to the end or an event in the distant past more than simply about riding in the snow.

More than that I realized that it kinda answers the question “Where do Rounders Come From?” What inspires us to go riding in the dead of winter when there is a nice warm car (if there is really someplace you HAVE to go), or better yet a glass of hot cider, a nice warm fire and (hopefully) an even warmer partner to cuddle up with inside on a snowy, blistery, winters day?

Perhaps we have to reach back into our early years, some almost forgotten vision as we stared out the window some wintry day in the almost forgotten past?

The Ghost Riders of Winter

Grey skies hanging low over a winter landscape.
Snow-softened outlines blending the works of nature and man.

A lone rider passes, slipping through the swirling snow-spots.
A silent progression through the gray dawn of a winter driven storm.

A passage unnoted by all save one set of small bright eyes,
    Framed in a frosted window
        and filled with the wonder of the vision beheld.

The ghost rider is gone but the image lingers on.
The seed of desire thus planted is left to ripen through the seasons.

Winters pass, white fields giving way to green and back again.
All the while the yearning planted in the past matures in the young soul.

A new winter arrives and with it a new rider emerges;
    The same bright eyes,
        now filled with the wonder of the first winters’ ride.

Following the path set down long before by the passing stranger,
The young rider passes out of sight around the bend.

Embarking on a quest to seek that which eludes,
He is driven by the wild winter wind and an image from his youth.

As it is with the endless rhythm of the seasons,
    Rider follows Rider;
        And another sower of seeds takes to the road and is gone.

© Jeffry L’H. Tank

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