The Sedate Life

I lead a fairly sedate life

but every now and then

I do something wild

just to feel really alive

like the other day I’m on this long stretch of road

through the Adelaide Hills

& I don’t know it at the time but my daughter is a few cars

behind in her little blue Subaru

and there’s this sudden roller coaster stretch

where the road steeply descends for a kilometre

then shoots up, the long climb to level

& my daughter thinks, God, how is dad going to keep up

with those cars once they get going?

but I just let out a whoop, push the pedal down

and go for it,

eat my dust, I say to the other sad saps as I shoot ahead

& my little charcoal Cruiser is the the Batmobile,

and I’m tearing up the bitumen on an assignment in Gotham

a dragon in my blood

& I keep going, going wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

but as the road levels out, I slow,

letting the other donkeys catch up,

then sit on the speed limit the rest of the way home,

little old sedate me.