I remember the smell of cut grass
sweetening my tattered pant cuffs
and the magic of daylight clinging
to a new blue bike. Back then
I would skim the 'Lewiston Sun'
over the graveled sidewalks and watch
the papers flop like wounded pigeons
as the news of Dunkirk and the Third Reich
targeted the doorsteps. Then I
would drop my hands from the handlebars,
whistle, and pump out of sight. Only
a magician's cape of daylight is now thrown carelessly over the cut grass,
and the 'Lewiston Sun' arrives by van.
Hitler is history, and many blitzkriegs have come.
But when I least expect to be trapped
by nostalgia, when I am unwilling
to daydream or to become sentimental,
a piece of sky seen in the eye
of a puddle or a bluebird plunging
from a telephone line reminds me
that once there was a time
when a new blue bike was mine.