A POEM - THEY WERE OUT TO GET US

THEY WERE OUT TO GET US
When we were young
we used to build
little bike trails in the woods.
Me, Raph and Abram.
The trails would cut around trees
and go over mounds
and around nicely molded burms.
We’d have one day,
or maybe two
if we were lucky,
to enjoy a trail.
Then the older brothers
of the neighborhood
would find the trail,
cut pits
in the back sides of the mounds
and fill them with broken glass.
They’d gouge ruts in the burms
so that at any speed you’d get stuck
and be sent over the edge
where they drove in sticks with sharpened ends.
And if we somehow navigated those first two,
we’d get clothes-lined
by fishing line near the end.
It was just one of those things in youth
that always pissed me off.