Woman and Machine
WOMAN & MACHINE
At a small hotel in Vitoria-Gasteiz
working at a table adjacent to a balcony
bounded and protected by an intricate
wrought-iron barrier rail, I was watching
pedestrians two stories below, intrigued
by the variety of the substantially
handsome, industrious people of that
beautiful place
The deepening joy of my dreamy diversion
was unexpectedly jarred by the sudden
distraction of a beautiful woman of indeterminate
age in a red winter jacket and high boots and heels,
a cascade of dark hair with a long silver streak
that glinted in the sun as she strode to the curb and
a large motorcycle that was masculine and black
as a heavyweight champion waiting for the bell
in a spot-lighted ring
She spent a full thirty seconds arranging her hair
under a bullet-shaped helmet that transformed her
image from an ancient Greek goddess, somehow
magically liberated from a red and black vase in an
Athenian museum, to a contemporary form of
something dangerously mobile on the roadways
of Spain
She should have been arrested after mounting her
bike, so casually arousing was the blending of
colors, the combined muscularity of woman and
machine, merging into traffic among Mercedes
and Audis, Kawasakis and Harleys but in the midst
of it all unmistakably distinct like a world-famous
swimmer, or a gold-medal sprinter, or a principal
dancer in a supermarket line among ordinary people
on an ordinary day!
Emanuel Carter
Copyright © Emanuel Carter | Year Posted 2021
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