Bike Rider

By Kenneth Pobo

When Harold Fizzlebotts rides
his bike to town, always taking
the same streets, he’s perplexed
on Tuesday when the final street
leads not to the Dollar Store

but to Heaven, a nervous place
like rapids before a waterfall. Angels
slide over the edge,
wings soaking wet.
On the shore Harold talks with
a decaying tree
limb which fell off in a storm--now
it remembers better days.
Harold remembers better days too.
Like when he flew balsa planes
in his back yard. By the time he
turned thirteen, those planes had
flown off or died in terrible
waste baskets. Sometimes he dreams

of Heaven—a sound of a badminton
birdie sailing over the net.