From my usual window, I watch a kid wheel by.
He leans back, peddling hands-free,
as if some girl or his mother is watching.
His white earbuds snug in place,
he snaps his fingers, casual and cool.
I let my brain play its games,
put myself back into 1969.
I'm ten, and I'm ducking under maple canopies
on the sidewalks of Orchard Street, racing away from enemy spies,
or standing on the seat of my banana-bike-turned-circus-horse,
toes pointed, smiling for the judges:
(freckled-faced girls who giggle
and suck on purple pixie sticks.)
With blue and red Bicycle cards in our spokes,
we coax our horses and dragons up Third Avenue,
feasting at the top of that mountain,
brown bags full of peanut butter and apples and Oreos,
(ambrosia, exotic figs, and crumpets).
Then finally, that full-lung downhill fly.
The cards in my wheels are the wind
under the wings of Pegasus.
Or, on slow Saturdays, smelling our fathers'
freshly cut grass fade behind us,
we race to a miles-away farm
to feel a real horse's lips on our apple-sugared palms,
the heated wind of July in our faces.
Perhaps this is what old age is all about, then:
appreciating our enviable lives, both then and now,
on a summer's day,
with no place to be,
with the world laid out
to wherever
our bikes or brains will carry us.
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Author Notes
I come from a small town, and a time when parents booted their kids out the door on summer mornings with instructions to be home by supper. We were gone all day long, in a world of imagination and adventure. My bike was an important part of my everyday freedom.
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