We move back like dancers
     when someone good takes the floor.
          Head shaved, chest bare, poise
     in a hurry, he powers up
for a heelflip backslide one-eighty out.

Bearings ram to tarmac
     with a switch hardflip. He gets
          his claw on the nose and does a crail snatch-up
     to a crooked grind, battling
down a double-barreled park rail.

I am with him on each bump and ollie,
     catching frontside air, then summoning
          gravity as a new friend. I want
     to quit my job, work that hard
to perfect the moves of an angel.

He stands ready to create a new form,
     some swooping scoop action leading
          to a fifty-fifty stall, as if split
     shins were only virtual,
then suddenly wings himself away.

Richard Waring

- published in The Comstock Review.

Richard Waring's poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, Sanctuary, Mothering, The Boston Globe, Phone-A-Poem, and elsewhere. His chapbook, "Listening to Stones," was brought out by Pudding House Publications in 1999. He lives in Belmont, Mass., with his son and daughter.