Roadster

How they haunt me, all the great drives:
The Pacific Coast Highway, from Los Angeles to San Francisco,
Four hundred miles, living on hamburgers and iced coffee,
Past forests and mountains and the glittering waves,
Looking for a change of climate;
The Amalfi coast, cruising mid-sky,
Along serpentine vertiginous roads,
Zigzagging the hairpin bends with a grin,
The lemon smell of happiness in my head,
And Parsifal soaring out over the sea;
The Grande Corniche, from Nice to Menton,
Piloting a convertible round the crazy curves,
Challenging the sea and sky with raffish bravado,
Heart spinning like a roulette wheel,
Wondering what my next card will be;
The Great Alpine Road in summer, top down, sunglasses on,
From Geneva to Milan, eight hundred and forty miles,
Lush meadows, granite peaks, wildflower scents,
Wandering up among the pines,
Stopping to eat at mountain huts,
Regal as a Hapsburg emperor;
The Pan-American Highway, from Anchorage to Santiago,
Seventeen thousand miles, riding my wheels like a cowboy,
Eating and breathing the wild roads,
Swallowing mountains, oceans, deserts, forests, cities, villages, rivers, lakes, skies,
To stagger into a café in Chile like a madman
And order a mote con huesillo;
The A303 from Basingstoke to Ashburton,
Humming through Hampshire, Somerset and Devon,
Squashing hedgehogs under my tyres,
Till I find my way to Dartmoor and walk
Into elfish Wistman’s Wood, all dwarf oaks
And lichen-scrabbled boulders.
And other routes, so many, on and off the map,
Each with the potential to be a work of art,
A movie without a script.