The Tyre Poem by Simon Armitage

The Tyre

Rating: 3.4


Just how it came to rest where it rested,
miles out, miles from the last farmhouse even,
was a fair question. Dropped by hurricane
or aeroplane perhaps for some reason,
put down as a cairn or marker, then lost.
Tractor-size, six or seven feet across,
it was sloughed, unconscious, warm to the touch,
its gashed, rhinoceros, sea-lion skin
nursing a gallon of rain in its gut.
Lashed to the planet with grasses and roots,
it had to be cut. Stood up it was drunk
or slugged, wanted nothing more than to slump,
to spiral back to its circle of sleep,
dream another year in its nest of peat.
We bullied it over the moor, drove it,
pushed from the back or turned it from the side,
unspooling a thread in the shape and form
of its tread, in its length, and in its line,
rolled its weight through broken walls, felt the shock
when it met with stones, guided its sleepwalk
down to meadows, fields, onto level ground.
There and then we were one connected thing,
five of us, all hands steering a tall ship
or one hand fingering a coin or ring.

Once on the road it picked up pace, free-wheeled,
then moved up through the gears, and wouldn't give
to shoulder-charges, kicks; resisted force
until to tangle with it would have been
to test bone against engine or machine,
to be dragged in, broken, thrown out again
minus a limb. So we let the thing go,
leaning into the bends and corners,
balanced and centred, riding the camber,
carried away with its own momentum.
We pictured an incident up ahead:
life carved open, gardens in half, parted,
a man on a motorbike taken down,
a phone-box upended, children erased,
police and an ambulance in attendance,
scuff-marks and the smell of broken rubber,
the tyre itself embedded in a house
or lying in a gutter, playing dead.

But down in the village the tyre was gone,
and not just gone but unseen and unheard of,
not curled like a cat in the graveyard, not
cornered in the playground like a reptile,
or found and kept like a giant fossil.
Not there or anywhere. No trace. Thin air.

Being more in tune with the feel of things
than science and facts, we knew that the tyre
had travelled too fast for its size and mass,
and broken through some barrier of speed,
outrun the act of being driven, steered,
and at that moment gone beyond itself
towards some other sphere, and disappeared.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Michael Walker 10 November 2018

Possibly too long, but well worth reading and thinking about.

2 4 Reply
Kumarmani Mahakul 10 November 2018

Well penned. Beautiful poem having touching expression.

1 3 Reply
Edward Kofi Louis 10 November 2018

To rest where it rested! Thanks for sharing this poem with us.

3 1 Reply
Bernard F. Asuncion 10 November 2018

Such a great poem by Simon Armitage......................

2 2 Reply
Adrian Flett 10 November 2018

A mystic, mysterious tyre, spiralled away into a legend. Great.

1 3 Reply
Fiona Hill 17 January 2021

one of my favourites

0 0 Reply
Peter 14 January 2021

Children erased...that's a great phrase.

0 0 Reply
paul amrod 13 May 2020

The general philosophy of this poem is for myself too existential. Although it has its merit.

0 0 Reply
Dr Antony Theodore 13 May 2020

Being more in tune with the feel of things than science and facts, we knew that the tyre had travelled too fast for its size and mass, and broken through some barrier of speed, . a great poem. tony

2 0 Reply

Beautiful and thoughtful

0 3 Reply
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Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage

Marsden, West Yorkshire
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