Bike Riding

We'd take DeReimer Avenue
to Edenwald, a long ride
at six and seven, legs and hearts
pumping, breath spent in our secret
yodel to urge on our two-wheeled
steeds. Our goal: Split Rock,
straddling the street, mysterious cliff,
silver with mica; we knew its name
even then. Our ponies tied
in weeds our mother feared were poison,
we'd clamber up the jagged face,
slither through the crevice of tilted
plates, scraping elbows and dungareed
knees, finally collapse in our cave.
Our whispers evoked Indians who'd lived
there, tribes of them, hunting the deer
and the antelope, sleeping on buffalo hides
—in the Bronx. Our mother warned us of danger
in the cave: marauders, we'd whisper
excitedly, bandits, like Jesse James
(we'd dug for his loot, in the inch of sand
in the corner). We kept an ear out
for his horses returning, kept also
an eye on my watch, and at quarter to five,
leapt on our ponies, headed home to dinner and Mom.

M. Doretta Cornellis a Sister of the Divine Compassion and Associate Professor of English at Pace University, Pleasantville, NY. Her poems have appeared in The National Catholic Reporter, /Review For Religious/, Connecticut River Review, HazMat, and Red River Review.