A big dog woofing.
Chainsaws running all day.
Me?  I’m not smoking tonight,
too much to do in the morning.

God, sometimes a day
runs you over.  Sometimes
you’re killed almost by it.
That’s big dog’s fault;

gets loud and mean and then
chases the day right out of its yard
and into the street and over us.
Those chainsaws must rile him up —

right here in the city, all that northwoods noise.
Didn’t think there were that many trees here.
The big dog pissed on all of them
and now he can’t tell where his territory is

so he’s woofing and we’re all a little on edge.
Days like this you wanna curl up with a bowl
and fake dead for the daylight hours.  Can’t, 
though; too much to do, and the dog’ll be hunting

bright and early,
and that dog will hunt and bite,
and the day will crush us before he gets to us
if we don’t get a move on.

It had stopped being cool when I was a kid
and became cool again as soon as I was not.

The only thing I know for sure
is that as practiced now it is a kind of low flight.

I know that you can move by grinding
or by sliding.  That’s the same as when you’re an adult.

I think some trick is called “gleaming the cube.”
Or perhaps there isn’t.  Some things are meant to be

obscure or meaningless. and that’s the same
as when you’re an adult.

But to fly like that, to ride handrails and swoop
through bowls and off ramps and dry pools?

To be in love with the thick clack of deck
and truck on hard surfaces?

To fall, again and again, and still smile and see it all
as joy and fun and purpose despite the blood and fracture?

Somehow, the appeal of that last bit escapes me
as I sit here looking out the window

at them rocking out.  “Damn kids,” I say.
Damn them and their flying where all I can do is plod.