Saturdays in Rhode Island

I’d get up
between 6 and 7:30--
early enough to hear
the echoes of the crack of dawn--
bolt downstairs in my
green sweatpants that were
what all true adventurers wore that year,
and devour my breakfast of champions:
milk and sugary cereal, guaranteed
to fuel my deeds for the day.
And then I’d beg,
“May I go ride my bike now?”
The other kids would be out,
dashing up and down the streets in friendly packs.
And my parents would ask that question,
“How’s your room look?”
And that question usually sent me
back up the stairs, a little sheepish.
And then I’d rush back down,
“Now may I go ride my bike?”
“The dishwasher,”
they’d say,
“you still have to finish your chores.”
Amazing, how quickly I could work
when I ached to be outside.
And then they’d let me go,
with smiles on their faces,
watch me fly to my bike and join the crowd.
We would go all over the neighborhood:
play cops-and-robbers,
go to the local playground
race each other up and down the streets.
One family had
an enormous oak tree that
spread hugely across their yard.
And if you knew where to step,
where to put hands and feet,
you could
climb up into it,
and sit where two gigantic branches spread
away from the trunk,
or climb into the branches to
make room for others.
There was a man who had a dog,
a Golden Retriever named Ranger.
That dog was my hero, for,
at a word from his master,
he would leap up the oak tree, jump
through the cleft at the trunk where the
branches spread,
and jump down on the other side.
It always took me a minute to climb up,
but Ranger leaped like a squirrel.
And finally, we would go home,
when the world got dusky
and the street lights
were coming on,
calling our goodbyes,
challenging each other to
another game of cops-and-robbers,
and I had decided I’d be a cop next time,
because the robbers
always got caught.
And we’d head in to our dinners,
and say hi to our parents, who must
have noticed that we smelled like dogs
because we’d been playing so hard.
but they never really mentioned it. It
was just part of Saturdays.