The Mountain Shadow

by Gregory David Roberts

Any good thing that dies inside can rise again, if you want it hard enough. The heart doesn’t know how to quit, because it doesn’t know how to lie.

Everything about him was right: the honest stare, the confident stance, and the light in his smile.

Instinct chooses her own children.

You’d be a top bloke, if you just had a little spite in you.

I’ve learned that sweet memories don’t walk through cynical doors.

handcart pullers straining under the load but smiling,

They wanted me to stay free, in part, because they wanted someone to escape and stay free.

No smile would work, no goodbye would pray, no kindness would save, if the truth inside us wasn’t beautiful.

Riding a motorcycle is velocity as poetry. The fine balance between elegant agility and fatal fall is a kind of truth, and like all truth, it carries a heartbeat with it into the sky. Eternal moments in the saddle escape the stuttering flow of time, and space, and purpose. Coursing on those wheels, on that river of air, in that flight of freed spirit there’s no attachment, no fear, no joy, no hatred, no love, and no malice: the nearest thing, for some violent men, for this violent man, to a state of grace.