On an ordinary morning on the twenty-first of May, the road had
traced a line from the sky down to my feet. I was waiting, wet and
heavy like a barrow full of dirt, when a youth brushed my
shoulder looking skyward as he passed.
Feet peddling, back straight,
he hovers unicycling in the second that I saw him. His
clear eyes are reflective in the sky’s descending gray,
mirroring St. Joan’s as she listened for her angels,
cheeks ruddy like my baby’s when she raises up her head.
In the breeze he left behind him,
in the breeze that streams about me,
pale honeysuckles break and fall, their boughs inclined.
Borne up, let down, I rush along the sidewalk,
tracing that one wheel between my stroller’s three, when I
find myself in tall grass and pause, for once, to breathe.
Delicate white seed heads stand upright and salute me, illumined
in the haze. I look east to where he’s gone. Herald of young
summer, we have seen your sign and known you. And now, we
wait for sunshine, we, the rearguard of late spring.