From the archives – Kids on Bikes — Rick Mullin

Kids on Bikes

On a painting by David Park

Unreachable. Beyond the glancing moment
when titanium scrapes handlebars
and pinwheels fly against the white cement,
we hear the echoed call. We look for cars

and find the summer’s end, and summer’s race.
A scramble at the rail that bars abstraction
from a track of ochre clay. A face
and hands, a formal portrait in refraction

caught in an aside. A reverie.
One instant in the long burn of the sun
recalled to orchestrate the harmony
of twilight on an archetype of fun.

An image we regard as an ideal.
A flashpoint in the spinning of a wheel.

from Autumn Sky Poetry 19 — by Rick Mullin

Painting by David Park