No Hands

He rode “no hands,” speeding
headlong down the hill near
our house, his arms extended,
held rigid away from his body,
our small daughter behind him
on the bike in her yellow sunsuit,
bareheaded. She held on to him
for her life. I watched them from
above – helpless: a failed brake.
Far below us, a stop-sign rose
like a child’s toy shield. He could
not stop, he would not. That hunger
for display overrode danger, illusions
of safety. Even death had less to do
with it than the will’s eventual triumph
over stasis: how he’d finally fly free
and how she might accompany him,
as an audience travels with a performer,
an object of regard. Downward, fast –
so what cannot stop holds on, holds on
to a mind flying away from itself, seeking
release from the soul speeding away, yet
staying close as breath, even at this distance.

• From Blue Rose by Carol Muske-Dukes (Penguin Books). © 2018 Carol Muske-Dukes.
  

Carol Muske-Dukes has published nine volumes of poetry, as well as novels, non-fiction and critical essays. Her latest collection, Blue Rose, is a kaleidoscopic work, both politically charged and personal. Family events, feminist celebrations and activist struggles have a transcendental element. “Blue rose” alludes to Novalis’s novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen, and symbolises the mysterious and romantic side of imagination: it provides the title of the opening poem about the birth of a daughter who “entering light ... was // danger blue”. No Hands may tell a story from this same child’s life at another moment of high risk: perhaps it, too, has metaphorical resonance as a portrayal of tenacity and transformation.

The short, enjambed lines of the opening narrative capture the headlong descent of the cyclist. In line five, we learn he’s the father of the vulnerably bareheaded child riding pillion, and that the speaker is the mother, watching in dismay. Her anxiety deepens to a slower, longer-lined contraflow of intellectual analysis as the poem progresses.

It’s evident that the rider is caught up in masculine display, “his arms extended, / held rigid away from his body” (while this would make balancing easier, it also demonstrates his bravado to the child behind him). The line breaks are gasps of fear: “She held on to him / for her life. I watched them from / above – helpless: a failed brake”. The “failed brake” analogy is powerful; it suggests both unwarranted self-blame and impending, unstoppable disaster. The narrative itself briefly decelerates; when it moves on, it introduces a new frightening image, the stop sign “like a child’s toy shield”. As in Robert Lowell’s poem Fall 1961: “A father’s no shield / for his child”.

Here, the poem focuses on the man’s psychodrama: “He could not stop, he would not … ” He is perceived as the driven, rather than the driver. Rational objections have no force in his out-of-body, out-of-mind entrancement.

From “Even death had less to do / with it”, the speaker seems to be viewing the event from farther away in time. She considers the death-wish, but finds a more complex motivation: the Nietzschean idea of “the will’s eventual triumph / over stasis.” The cyclist has his own powerful myth of “how he’d finally fly free …”. The ominous factor in the speaker’s analysis is that the child’s witness is demanded, “as an audience travels with a performer …” It’s a role an adult might have rejected: the child has no such choice.

The tension of the final complex lines is between fusion and disintegration. “What cannot stop” is a force that originates in the cycling man; his energy, will, exhibitionism and sheer desire for flight. The concept of the “mind flying away from itself, seeking / release from the soul speeding away” suggests a self divided, as well as a division between selves. The repetition of “holds on” emphasises a grip both physical and mental.

No Hands is designedly inconclusive. Its ending allows us to read various turns in the untold narrative of what happened next. It could be a crash, transformation or rebirth, or perhaps a mixture of these outcomes. The tone is empathetic, and movingly closes the spaces between the poem, the speaker and her subjects. The “distance” in that memorably cadenced final observation – “yet/ staying close as breath, even at this distance” – can be read as both time-transcending distance, and the physical distance between the father, the child clinging to him, and the mother – almost no distance at all. It might even evoke the necessary connection of the risk-taking creative drive, to writing poetry. Either way, the tone of this poem is empathetic, and movingly closes the spaces between the writer, the speaker and her subjects.