A bicycle angling on Imlay Street, along
The knit road where two themes merge--
Time past, small feet still burning like
Cobblestones in the sun, time present
His presence on a fictional street.
There is landscape in his heal,
There are shoes strewn on natural paths
In the hills radial to his sight--
Where leaves clash their yellow feet.
Faces like storefronts pass in the rainbow
At his elbow of steel, like shavings of
Color mirroring young eyes, human suns.
His downhill shadow outraces the sun,
He hears thunderstorms in a marble sink,
The sepia road under turning feet,
The past--the past is
A bicycle coasting down Imlay Street,
Blue tiretracks across the sky,
The silent inflections on sun on sleeve.
Listen, he is listening for the sky,
His silence extended in circular hills
Where arch horses muse, where headlights
Scan written slopes in the perfect meter
And hoof, of chance. He steals a face when the
Sky looks--pale, from imaginary heights.
A glimpse of time, a glimpse made skies,
A bicycle angling on frequent streets.
He took her to the place where dead faces
Mar the leaves, where yellow leapt and fell.
Clipping their hedges, shears high against
The forenoon sky, residents of Inlay Street
Watching him, from the edges of reserve.
A patch of driveway extends too far
Until memory replaces at one end
A girl with a hoop of color that bends
Across the lawn made of marble dust
To the white house where characters of joy
Knit roads across the oaken sheen, while
They sit and discuss time’s simile . . .
Their legs merging with wood in hills,
In audiences of summer rain
Where faces appear with changeable eyes
Cast down like time casting down
Crowned acorns where a fender meets
A spot of earth, exchangeable-- Now
He runs to the house;
His life is a bicycle tire spinning
In green shadows of mirth.
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