Another Heaven I’d Have to Give Up
Skates strapped to our sneakers,
we ruled the sidewalks
of our Boston suburb –
and listened to our mothers
only sometimes. After school,
we’d fly down the incline
toward the train depot,
hook a lamppost with one arm and spin.
Nothing like that torque,
that sudden harnessing of power.
Girlish dervishes, we whirled
until one day as my arm looped the post
I heard a horn,
a sound like a step-father
woken by loud laughter
and saw myself as the driver did—
flash of girl flying
toward grind of wheel and track
and knew that this heaven,
was something else,
this giddy rush of leaf and sky,
I’d have to give up.
………………………
In the Back Seat of the My Mother’s VW Convertible, Invisible
The pines rushed by me for hours, invisible.
My face obscured by a mat of tangled hair, invisible.
My hands cold and sticky from rest stop ice cream:
……two signposts in a squall, invisible.
Cumulous clouds magnificent against azure sky, invisible.
Our mother’s foot on the gas, her blond streaked hair
……blown wild, sun blasted from a beach-side summer, invisible.
The gale-force pressure of the drive, we children in the back seat
……wind-silenced, shivering, and invisible.
The joy my mother must have felt in that ride!