Returning To Bergen Street

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