a bicycle wheel spins

and the world trundles along

a newborn crosses the stage

and takes the glossy diploma

with a tiny paw and a stunted giggle;

the applause is deafening, a sea

of diamond cheers and gorgeous explosions

a bicycle wheel spins

and the laughter setting the sky

on fire billows in tall, rosy blooms,

like flowers amid a summer field

where young minds sit and wonder,

where is the hand to guide us, where

is the mother to clean our scabs

and give us love when all we have is sad,

and

a bicycle wheel spins, unsteady,

as the arrogant fire chills and the laughter dies,

replaced instead with cold, sullen sighs,

and all our rubicund cheeks freeze in time,

like sculptures in the snow of when we were six

and the sun was a poached egg in a thirsty sea,

but the sand has slipped the hole and soon

somewhere a bicycle wheel spins

and I watch faces glide by on a wire,

memories old and shriveled, like dusty pages

in a lost book, faces once golden and gleaming

turned into the gossamer powder of crippling age,

and suddenly these faces blur and turn away,

as tears drown them in a fearful regret

and a bicycle wheels spins—and catches

I watch, deaf, as the trees glisten on the road,

yellow and flavored like candy, a luxurious marble architecture

framed in a sky poured full with scintillating marbles,

and here I wonder why these hands do not touch

the lovely face that is suspended beside me, a petunia

in a field of weeds, a hand to fill a hand and an ear

to receive a voice, but I think, frightened,

strange, I don’t think

I’m here anymore,

and I hear churchbells ringing,

but it hasn’t been ten thousand years

and with this the bicycle wheel stops.