BICYCLE SUMMERS


Sixth week of the quarter -- and I can smell summer coming. One of my summer projects will be to pull out an old manuscript and try -- again -- to turn the story of my childhood obsession with horses into fiction. Here's an old poem that negotiates the same territory.


BICYCLE SUMMERS

In morning bright of pasture days
We untied metal steeds
From creaking gates. Girls,
We led our bicycles as if at halter,

Patting handlebars, a curve of nose and neck.
It was summer all summer long those days
We taught our bikes to barrel race,
And brought them afterward to water.

Mary's horse and mind were blue,
Kathy's gray--Lori's horse was purple--
Flashing spoke, gleaming hoof.
And when evening called us home,

Two girls east and two girls west,
We left our horses tied to nudge the grass
Grown long against a summer gate
And galloped to our supper.

Comments

  1. Bicycles make unusual horses but they can buck you off. My daughter pretended the dog was a horse and taught her to jump the jumps down the hall, a hunter jumper.

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  2. We were CONSTANTLY pretending everything was a horse -- a poor, bedeviled calf, the gates between stalls in the barn (with gunnysack saddles), the back of the davenport -- or we were trotting along slapping our own legs with a piece of barntwine :)

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