Tour

A romantic mixture
Of myth, legends and endurance time trial.
And the ultimate billets-doux
Sent by the French people
To its countryside.
Fields and flowers and expanses,
Wide roads and roundabouts,
At which a peloton
Unzips and spins.
Quaint cobbled villages,
Windowboxed and spruced
Cheers and celebrates.
While mountain passes bring out the mist
And the misty eyed,
Where cloud dreams can burst
Like raindrops.
And the jewel of Paris
Where it ends,
Under the watchful eye of Triomphe.

The race fashions itself
Upon coloured jerseys.
The greens with their explosive
Gun shattering speed,
Swaying and piston-driving in the sprint.
And polka dots hit the heights
With a raw strength,
On the endless, sapping Escherian slopes.
While, like a burning beacon of sunshine
The yellow lights up the front,
And the late night Lantern Rouge
Brings up the rear.
A sense of the iconic
And the spectral,
In which the devil
Can show himself at any time,
Over a three week journey
Of personal joys and hells.