damp-leaved
november mornings
find me as a boy
when I rose ahead of the sun, and
I pedaled my bike
thru predawn twilight,
an oversized canvas bag heavy
with news of a larger world and looming disasters
pinching my shoulder. I loved
the solitude, the dusty sidewalks, the empty streets,
hearing the matin song of tires pressing pavement,
and not knowing life would never again
be so black and white.
in the dark, I memorized
the smells of thinning oaks
and naked maples, the air
a luscious trail
of lamp light haloes and
decaying leaves
in the fresh morning chill,
the morning hoar stiffened the grass
and the midnight frost brittled the flowers
noting the lessenings, but not the lessons
the little boy on the 20” bike is a memory now;
so too the pumping of growing legs
and the painless mornings
and the sunny afternoons of easy peace;
come now the darkening evening
when all the news has gone stale.
