Guess the Races of Three Boys from Champaign

                                  1

The nineish summer-skinny imp-boy veers

the bicycle he has no notion yet of trusting

off the sidewalk, where the squashed mulberries

form many contusions. Riding as though and as though

on an animal (maybe his bike

should have gazelle eyes) he is hatching plans

somehow angelically pristine of doubt

between them and fruition. He dumps

the bike on this side of the jungle gyms,

while cottonwood foam blows up from the branch,

and wind imparts the grass two sibling greens,

and parents show their callow half-formed centers

cajoling children. He is alone, and sets

himself to picking clover; whole minutes pass

when all he does is increase one bouquet

of grass-high nondescript white clover blossoms.

There must be a million in the field

not in his hand. He lays the fistful down

and takes a roofing nail out of his pocket,

and with it and his eldritch patience awls

through-holes in his foam-grips. He twists the stems

into a stalk he tapers, pinches off,

and jams into the handlebars, only

to watch the blossoms fall apart and over.

He tries and fails again, incredulous

now the ornament he planned as though

designing a contraption, some trebuchet

or hovercraft half-specified and magic,

will not work on mere enthusiasm.

His tantrum comes on suddenly, a spastic

little stomping dance across the grass,

and ends without his having made a sound.

He is off the way he came. They are

not brutal, the feebly dreamt surrounding houses,

crops striving in the dirt, child-rearing habits

lapsed and current, like childhood diseases.

The bric-a-brac on his bedroom floor that damns

him to time. But neither are they tender

of that thing his paltry ruined posy,

the fanning homely crumbs of perfect whim,

is evidence of.

                                  2

The hangdog rookie lifeguard shuffles in

already delegated an action item

involving a stepladder, a spray bottle,

and a biohazard bag. The dim

guttering aura of his authority

tries to fill the locker room, as does

the smell of sock, and calms imperfectly

the preteens disobeying rule eleven

regarding horseplay. The kid attains the utmost,

handicapable shower stall, yanks

the curtain and deploys his ladder, ascending

three rungs of his portable Golgotha

and staring as though straining to make out

St. Paycheck in a stained glass window. The bottle

and empty plastic sack slump at his sides,

props whose ritual has slipped his mind,

or tools of tradesman or physician agape

at a humdinger, for damned if not nine feet

up the cinder blocks, improbably

massive, glistening, and cantilevered,

there does not jut a load of crap. He says,

almost quietly, already showing

awareness of those situations where

resort to melodrama will not help,

but still somehow reluctant to let go

of being someone singled out by fate,

“You have got to be motherfucking kidding me.”

No poo-flinger or projectile buttor

titters from the bench. The sun, supremely

supercilious in the skylights, mums;

the ceiling fans the shit perhaps was aimed at

spin an rpm too fast for one to follow.

The dented cubby rows and columns retain

the continence of safe-deposit boxes.

If he does not punch out and not come back,

the lifeguard shall be our savior in ways

we scarcely dreamt or paid him for, thinking

all he had to do was watch our children.

As for the mystery of whether one

is being kidded, it is his to bear.

No ceo of pooldom makes that much.

                                  3

The corner drugstore lends the cause a spigot;

the cause runs hoses to the parking lot,

and proto-nubile junior-high girls lure

out of the intersection, by sign and banner,

ten perverts an hour. Shucked garden-snail

of an errand-runner, five dollars gets you

a sort of car wash, and gets the wrestling team

closer to their travel fund objective.

Small talk with the game and patient coach

will pleasantly derail you, as the squad

swarms with half-grasped purpose in your service.

One is dutiful and has a bucket.

One is cheery with a rag. The rowdy

buck for the nozzle, the second-rowdiest

fleeing when one prevails: rinser-off

of quarter panels and future quarterbacks,

broad-shouldered as though tapped for it, as though

for violin or chess. Can he see,

from where he is, the rainbow that he issues,

the laughter-stippled day convened for him

and his? Days to come he is hawking

two-dollar Jujubes out of a knapsack

in the alley by the multiplex;

there fall to him the odd, ambivalent

vagina-samplings behind the Sonic Burger,

and on his cast the day he tries to ollie

the planters at the bank, a turquoise heart

to dot the i in Brandi. We are going

to be all right; good supervisors abound;

our grab-ass shall be moderated, and those

who tsk are bound to say I knew you when.

We need be lots of things, but never lonely.