Returning To Bergen Street Poem by Susan Lacovara

We were much older
My brother and I
On a drive through the streets
Where our youth played out
Like hounds picking up a familiar lost scent
Our heads cranning out the car windows
Caught up in the best of breezes
Blown off Bergen Street

Tossed back in time to find
The hill once seemingly too high
To navigate without proper breath
Stored in our laughing lungs
Was now just a bump in the road
It's grand scale now so slightly pitched
When once on a snowy day
Impossible to reach it's summit
With wooden sleds in tow

Mr. Swaine's colossal compound
Complete with mountainous mounds
Of felled Autumn leaves
Now appeared a rustic cabin on the corner
Of yesterday's yearning to grow up faster
And it was only yesterday we stole his bundled bags
A treasure trove of crimson leaf luxury
To dump and dance in sheer delight
Much to the displeasure and disbelief of our mom

Barely changed the bleachers
By the Old Nichol' s Road ballpark
Where we ran bases in glorious summertime sweat
And fell backwards onto the spinning playground carousel
Spying the trails of skywritting planes
Their lettered messages left overhead
For us to decipher in cloudless merriment

We slid in and about our perfect postcard town
Two tourists returning to their favorite vacation
Of a life long ago lived and lively kept
Dropping Newsday names by the mailboxes
Of memorialized moments, golden not gone
When all the joy in the world was ours
And he and I still kids at heart
Holding hands against all time