Butternut Hill

Butternut Hill

You have to live a hundred years
before you can relish being a kid,
riding your bike, wind sweeping through
feathered hair, the Jack of Spades
slapping at your spokes.

A kid surges through the present,
then makes off to dinner, homework, bed.
But at one hundred,
you will relive that sense of abandon
every morning you wake
and find your feet don’t quite
touch the ground.

You will stop a minute, before your toes
touch the slippers, and savor –

the thought of biking down Butternut Hill,
coasting around the corner,
feet flailing in the air,
as they are now.

Your feet come to rest on the pedal, but not before
the wheels have reached
Ridgeland Drive.

You land safely in the garage
before curfew, as if you have crossed
some imagined finish line.

11/8/11