Richard Long

Requiem for French Horn and Clarinet

The other day I saw
Rāfe on the shoulder
of a road, holding a pistol
like a French horn,
not like back in the day
when he rode on the rack
of my bike, facing traffic,
playing his instrument
and I would stop
to play along on my clarinet
to fast cars and RVs
that slowed to wave, clap,
and toss coins to us
on the shoulder of the road.

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Richard Long is currently writing poems about ghost bikes and bikers and for the last 26 years has edited 2River, quarterly publishing The 2River View and occasionally publishing individual writers in the 2River Chapbook Series.

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