Monday, January 26, 2015

The Saturday poem: Nun on a Bicycle

by Jonathan Edwards

'Powered by her sandals' … Nun on a Bicycle by Jonathan Edwards
‘Powered by her sandals’ … from ‘Nun on a Bicycle’ by Jonathan Edwards. Photograph: Filippo Monteforte/Getty Images
Now here she comes, rattling over cobbles,
powered by her sandals, the gentle downhill
and the grace of God. Now here she comes, her habit

what it was always waiting to become:
a slipstream. Past stop signs, the pedestrian
traffic at rush hour, the humdrum mopeds,

on a day already thirty in the shade:
with her robe fluttering like solid air,
she makes her own weather. Who could blame her,

as the hill sharpens, she picks up speed and smiles
into her future, if she interrupted
the Our Fathers she’s saying in her head,

to say Whee, a gentle Whee, under her breath?
O cycle, Sister! Look at you now, freewheeling
through the air conditioning of the morning –

who’s to say the God who isn’t there
isn’t looking down on you and grinning?


From My Family and Other Superheroes (Seren, £9.99), which won the Costa Poetry award. The Costa Book of the Year is awarded on 27th January

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