Red Braces on the Back Road

The road lies open, white with hammered heat,
a rough strip humming under waiting tyres.
Long grass leans in and rasps against itself.
A single lamp is nailed up on its pole
as though broad day could still lose track of home.

They have stopped where the quiet opens out.
Blue bike. White sleeves. Red braces, bright as vows
that do not need a church to make them hold.
Behind him, one hand anchors at his waist;
her dress snags wind and keeps it at the hem.
Clouds hang over fields with farmer’s patience,
slow as cattle shifting shade by shade.

Everything here is ready to begin:
the engine with its tick of cooling metal,
their shoes turned slightly towards the dirt-bright lane,
dust waiting for the shove and spit of speed.
Even the light looks held and not yet spent—
on chrome, on hair, along the road’s cracked seam,
on that far look cast past the camera
towards whatever mile comes hard and next.

This is the way some futures first take hold:
not with brass, nor with bright and polished doors,
but by choosing, in the plain blaze of noon,
to share the narrow balance of the thing—
her faith set lightly in the small of him,
his hands accepting all the jolts ahead,
both dressed too finely for the honest weather,
both game enough to make a road of it.

Soon they will go. The lane will take them in.
The grasses will stand back. The clouds will draw
their slow white shutters on the afternoon.
Only that red will linger in the eye,
a match-flame carried level through the wind.