Leg

Posted on 21 September 2009

Balloon tires rusty rattling
roll to a stop on the melting summer
black macadam, (braids undone),

her foot

(its journey from the
humming pedal soft
with ocean salt dune crust
to tufts of roadside
grass and dirt)

is sneakered down to rest

while our car passes
and her short breath (sipping
her back to this same road
where her 10 year-old self
I catch a flash of–-hip toweled
now and 57—but ragged shorts then
with three brief months
before the blood leg flow
teen boys aching her
into their hard lamb skin world
parading and gasping
to pearly children

can be calmed
now to here where

it’s all gone by
like us in wakes of wistful
sweet exhaust and she can saddle older
rise herself again
back up on spokes
and weather home
to where her bike is hung.