Once A Place

Once a place of water
moccasins sleeping lightly
and gators and lizards
watching quietly
beneath ramrod straight
cypress trees
and lazy
swamp ferns, swaying in the
slightest wind.

A boy of five sits on
his Christmas bike, blinking,
smiling as the camera
shutters a permanence
of time, of moment;
the boy of
five, silently plotting to
turn four wheels
into two.

The man remembers the boy,
the place, the day four wheels
became two and the boy flew
down the sidewalk
into sunlight,
past where the gators
and lizards had watched
quietly and the snakes had slept
lightly with open eyes.