As soon as the sun comes out in Kansas and the air warms up, on first Sundays, each month, thousands of bikers mostly in groups large and small –individualism is hard to find– hit the road. They have preferred meeting places along the rural highways. Cassoday, the southwestern portal to the Flint Hills, is one.

Ten miles to its north Matfield Green is another. In Matfield Green the bikers, on Harley Davidson, BMW, Suzuki, Yamaha, and each spotless machine a mechanic’s dream, meet at the Hitchin’ Post behind my house to cheer up with beer, to talk tall to mates, or to arrange dates. Their presence, in heavy leather or other stages of ritual dress, and undress, as well as the resonance of their engines’ roar wake up the poet inside me. Not that my verse amounts to much. No wonder, the beer in sight is merely Bud Light …

The guys are gay and hearty and obviously ready to party. Just as I feared they all savor a beard or at least dot a dash rather outsize moustache. They cough, spit and sneeze, eat a baconburger with cheese, and near the cooler with beer they always have to leer when someone gets drunk as an elephant’s trunk. They laugh and joke, enjoy many a smoke, and whether they leave or linger they are fast at giving the finger. There are cheers and hisses for each precious Missus. Only one hick is jealous and draws his knife to show he’s oh so protective of The Wife. Most others just whirl to show off their girl. Clancy’s sweet Nancy prances and dances and her thighs sing and sigh. Wearing do-and-dare underwear, Colleen Thorn gives all males a long horn and balls hot as peas in a pot, until their pricks become giggle sticks. I guess no serious biker takes a virgin bride for a ride. Everyone’s smile is a dime a mile. Then, suddenly, observant I … I meet the girl they call Bonnie’s eye. Oh my … And it is summertime. See:

Bonnie fair there,
Doesn’t she have marvelous hair?

Not to mention her tale of two cities,
My God, what titties!

Her outrageous chest
Is truly the best.

Could we cuddle and kiss
In heavenly bliss, Miss?

Make believe
Adam and Eve?

Yet with watery eyes blinking
I leave it at thinking

Of having a bang
In rhyming slang.

A ball of chalk,
I just walk. 

It takes a while, but in the end the engines roar off, the randy heat diminishes, and prosaic me returns. The following evening, I am having a drink at the Hitchin’ Post when the blind man, the one known to keep the double doors swingin’, walks in and joins me at the bar. I buy him a beer and we talk this and that and nothing much else. Until he asks me, “Did you see that Bonnie woman yesterday?” And he shakes his head in much unbelief. “Ma-a-a-n, mmmmmmmmm, what a sight!” Which are the only lines not fully true in this tale of brief encounter (and borrowed from Buddy Guy).

Ton Haak,
Matfield Green, KS, June 2010