Today, I’m looking decades back and find
my younger self astride a Schwinn Typhoon
–“flamboyant red” with a matching state of mind—
and riding free throughout the afternoon.

It seems a fairy tale, with sweetened air
that filled my lungs beneath an azure sky
and let the sunlight glisten in my hair.
I remember thinking that bike and I could fly.

But just beyond the edge of good ol’ days
were unseen anger, anguish, blood, and tears
of those whose births were unlike mine, whose ways
arose from lives of hunger, dearth, and fears.

A boy so young, so clean, is free to soar;
an honest man, to be a man, does more.