Elmira, 1974
We shouldn’t have been that far from home.
That’s what I understand now.
But that summer the air was thick and bright,
and Mom said, “Just around town,”
which in Lincoln Street language
I was on my orange Sting-Ray -
Christmas prize, king of the block -
and she was wobbling on my sister’s green one,
pregnant, laughing,
one hand drifting now and then to her belly
as if counting us.
We rode past Woodlawn,
past rows of granite names
older than our daring,
then started climbing,
houses thinning,
sky widening,
lungs working harder
than our sense ever had.
“Just a little farther,” she said.
Up Harris Hill,
where wind pushes back
and the Soaring Museum flashes in the sun
like something built for leaving.
At the top we stood straddling bikes,
breathless,
the valley spilling out below us;
fields, roads, a river threading through.
We felt enormous.
Then we dropped.
Down the back slope,
fast enough to frighten thought -
hair whipping,
tires humming,
joy reckless and clean.
Through Big Flats.
Through fields bending low.
Toward Route 352,
where trucks tore past
and the shoulder narrowed
to a strip of gravel and nerve.
We kept pedaling.
By the time we rolled onto Lincoln Street
the light had gone syrup-thick.
Dad was in the driveway,
shirt dark with sweat,
one hand gripping the mailbox
like it might steady him.
“Where the hell have you been?”
His voice cracked on hell.
He looked at Mom’s belly,
then at the road behind us,
as if it were still chasing.
Mom just smiled,
brushed hair from her eyes,
hand resting low and sure.
We were sunburned, thirsty, alive.
Years later,
I don’t remember what we said.
I remember the climb.
The drop.
The thin shoulder beside roaring trucks.
And her voice, light and certain:
“Just a little farther.”
GB Shaw Jr.
Horseheads, NY
2005
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