Fifth Grade
As I flew into town
that first time, leaning over
the gull-winged sweep
of the handlebars, the burn in my
pudgy, mad-pumping thighs,
told me I was fast, was
free, was finally entering
the my-country-’tis-of-thee
we’d all been singing,
sweet land of weekend-
playground liberty.
That mile I’d never ridden
was a hundred miles,
the fresh fall breeze speed itself,
as those fat tires
snarled through dunes
of shoulder gravel and
eddies of falling leaves.
When I jumped the curb
onto the school’s front sidewalk,
town kids, exotic friends named
Cindy, Billy, Darlene, and Gary,
had already gathered, long
unchaperoned, at ease,
their preadolescences already
underway, their slow turn
toward my approach blasé
as I came skidding into
that newest of my old
neighborhoods of memory.
Higher Education
After graduation, after tossed caps, after
family photos, first legal cigars, all seniors
were invited to a bonfire on Packer’s dad’s
vacant land, unfarmed acreage of an unknown
man known only for his temper, shotguns,
and bows, and everybody was going as if
it were sponsored by the school itself, like
the SATs or prom, last time together before
heading for college, menial jobs, or Vietnam.
I couldn’t have guessed what to expect,
hadn’t ever partied, let alone on a tract
of scrubby woods and meadow shoe-horned
among endless rows of beans and corn—wasn’t
even sure where to find it in the endless dark,
Mom’s Dodge Swinger swinging its brights
across graveled crowns of corduroyed roads,
or where to turn, other than toward the glow
I imagined looming like a country sunset,
pulsing a giddy welcome into the night sky.
I was late, cars parked in ditches, odd clumps
of unidentifiable classmates spread out
in the smoky dark, others wandering singly
as if lost, in a haze, this person or that
hurrying, acting strangely, as if in a daze.
When I reached the light, I could see why:
everyone was drinking and smoking weed,
the sweet smell everywhere, and guys, some
my tea-totaling friends, had six-packs strapped
to their belts, and girls who didn’t drink
were stumbling around, reclining against logs,
sitting on stumps in circles, chatting, chugging,
and making out, and, I began to realize,
having fun—without me—which broke all
the easy certainties of my heart, though
I guess by now I’ve nearly gotten over it.
