Liza Long

WALKING ON THE BOISE RIVER GREENBELT ONE SUMMER EVENING

Liza Long

Old people pass on candy-colored bicycles (alone or in pairs), wrinkled, smiling, baskets brimming with books, fresh-cut fragrant lavender, homemade apple pies corseted in clear Saran wrap.

As I nod and smile, a sudden vision of my death visits me. I am eleven (again) nestled birdlike, secure in the crook of my grandmother’s apple tree, (the one from which we hurled half-ripened fruit at those boys that summer).

On the wind, the far-off chime of bicycle bells tolls (ask not!) as words of the Blue Book of Fairy Tales (Oh once! Upon a time!) swirl in the swelling shade and blur and fade.