Concourse

Crickets chitter outside. Inside the teacher

Leans to a lithograph: a meadow expands

Under his musing voice; a barn is gently

Effaced by a sweep of his hands.

Late afternoon falls through the skylight like amber,

The benches are shadowed, the brightness falls

On the man in front of the class, on the pictures

Crowded over the walls.

Hers, the bicycle shop in water colors-

The waiting wheels in a sparkle of blue

And cadmium red on a road, by a doorway-

Is the one he is coming to.

Will he laugh: "6 by 12, mounted on cardboard!"? ...

The spokes, if he touched one, would twinkle and whirr,

Every bell would trill, in a heat the wheels would

Pedal to peace with her.