Risk And Risk

I used to hitch lifts when I could,
where the roads were narrow
and drivers drove at speeds
where they they could stop,
where there were places
at the side of the road.

I made a substitute for a career
out of travelling hopefully,
whilst I was unemployed-
I had to do something
to will both my self,
and my reduced money,
to make both go further
than others predicted they should. 

I wanted to make the best
out of the less allotted to me.

I would always arrive somewhere,
even if where I arrived stopped short
of where I wanted to be.

All that ended with Covid,
when the risks were no longer
'Will I be late to get where I want to be',
or 'Why does this man want to feel my knee?
Am I his opportunity for a secret
and rather humourless exchange? 
The risks had changed
into something more serious,
where all strangers are a risk.
And the people we presumed to know
could not be trusted to bear their face value.   

When Tenderness Is In The Moment

Travel as an idea is as old as Man,
much older of we include migration
as observed among the birds
and other winged species.

But the history of travel
that I want an account of
is by it's nature impossible
to collate and tell;
a history of hitching lifts.

Please accept the following
as one example
of what it might be like.

Recently I saw an interview
with blues giant B.B. King
where he reflected on his 1940's,
where Saturday's he hitched
from near where he worked
to the surrounding towns
to busk, playing his blues guitar,
in places where both white folks
and black folks both passed by
in order, so he said, to be heard
by the greatest number of people.
Because he had to get enough money
to pay for his passage later that day
to be back to the farm he still worked on.

He spoke of that life
with a humility that nobody
could find fault with.

Maybe that explains why
the history of giving lifts 
and getting them won't be told
-it involves accounting for generosity
about something we can't hold
except in the moment we are given it.