Wheels

I

There was something about
that concrete and metal.
That wood and polyurethane.
Our blood, billowing in our veins
would rush like fools to our heads.

What else could explain this compulsion
to hurl ourselves off tops of staircases,
down rusted handrails into oncoming traffic
like our mortality was a bothersome fly.

And we flew.  Raw palmed and scabby
elbowed, we flew.  Seven-ply maple
wings and grip tape parachutes, we
launched ourselves off ledges like the
ground didn't exist.  We slid and flipped
and lived
and flew. Our bodies, our boards ever once
contemplating the landing.

II

He sits now, immobile in his chair,
legs longing for the vibrations
carried from street to chest.
He used to ride the asphalt until
his feet were blistered and bloody,
These days he tires easily - even
speaking can wear him down.
When it does, he talks in the language
of pavement cracks and parking lots.
His voice swerves in and out of the traffic
in our conversation.

He was the best of us once,
that concave deck seemed an extension
of his body - we'd watch him in disbelief,
360 degrees and straight up like his
lungs were filled with helium.  He'd
laugh his way back to earth.

He still laughs,
his eyes burnished blue, speech clear,
recounting broken bones,
looping wooden waves
and the jettisoning of gravity.

He tells me in hindsight
that the click of the wheels
connecting back to pavement
is the jaws of a beast closing,
is finite, is the almost imperceptible
click of a minute hand falling into place.

His body no longer measures time
in movements, it is a prison of
deteriorating muscle and tendon.
I wonder when he dreams,
does his blood still bloom,
do those peripheral nerves still
send their broken signals
to push, to connect, to fly.

III

I'm skateboarding circles in my driveway,
can feel my age in each flex and turn.
My knees crackle and complain as they loosen.

I hold my son in one arm, and we ride,
around, and around, and around.  He
is mesmerized by the shush of the wheels
on concrete, interrupted by each crack
in a rhythm like the pulsing in his veins -

it is familiar. He laughs when the wind
is in our faces, he likes its playful touch.
And when it is at our back, the wind
whispers of quickening blood and wood,
of polyurethane and gravity,
the wind whispers of flight.