Month of Poetry, Day 20

Three Country Boys in the City

These are the things that thrill you:

Pulling the wheelie-bag through train stations
(one of the last tasks you fight for the privilege to perform)

Mastering escalators
(you're all experts by ride #3)

Squeezing into the back of a taxi cab
(even if you did want the red one)

Twirling through the revolving door of our dodecahedron hotel
(you can never stop at one revolution)

Guessing which of the three elevators will come first
(you fight over the buttons, too)

Rushing out onto our 24th-floor balcony
(it makes my stomach drop every time)

The bottomless supply of pancakes at the breakfast buffet
(you don't seem to notice the syrup isn't real)

Sky-high walls of glass, bronze and marble statues every block,
copper-domed churches, the Swann fountain
(you run around and around it, toss in pennies, stare mesmerized at the water)

Pigeons, house sparrows, flowering cherries, tulips, giant magnolia blossoms
(as if we didn't live right in a clearing in the woods)

And me?  What thrills me is watching your eyes grow wide
(even as my nerves grow as tired as your feet)