Finding Out There Were Mountains

the mountains here are wild;

you'd never know if you didn't get out of the city

which can consume you as it almost did me.

for the first six months of my living here,

I truly believed the entire island to be a metropolis.

I knew my way around town, Taoyuan,

having purposely lost myself a few times

on my motorbike- my Sanyang one-fifty.

I would ride around; I quite enjoyed being lost,

until I'd see something I recognized

and doing it this way the city soon took shape,

like a forming jigsaw puzzle.

it was on one of these adventures

when as lost as I'd ever been,

I reached an interesting cusp,

where the relentless city gave up as

up until then I had never dreamt it would.

In its place cut a deep valley;

the road I was on, the number seven,
wound down into it.

I could make out a river in a huge floodplain,

making tributaries of itself and reforming

like a silver child with too much space to play in.

but it was the mountains on the other side of the valley

that ensnared my gaze and attention- steep and jungled,

and clearly the number seven cut into them.

I took a chance on the petrol I had left in my tank;

the gauge was broken and always showed full,

and made for them, popping out of the urban fizz

like a cork.