A Father and Son

It was only when I held his hand in mine,
feeling the grip of a boy facing the world
with courage–
dreaming, questing, imagining what he will be one day,
stretching his arms to the sky to make room for his dreams–
eyes alight, smile bright, mind turning faster than the chrome spokes on his racer bike;
the gift from a father who remembers the freedom of timeless rides beneath warm summer sun,
dirt paths beside a running creek,
the humid smell of thunderstorms on asphalt, peddling faster and faster he goes,
the wheels of a young mind spinning closer to wondering ‘who am I’ in a world in which
the best answers are taken,
the intriguing  puzzles solved,
the highest peaks climbed,
making the challenge of ‘I’ and the question of ‘who’ slip further and further from reach,
like a toy airplane on a string – propeller roaring, lights blinking, around it turns,
but no where it goes–
and his tender fingers, wrapped in childhood nostalgia, reach for mine,
and they feel like my father’s hands,
which feel like my hands;
hands the three of us share,
all reaching for the same thing.