TURNINGS

As I was driving home through the narrow village streets, the sun just about to set beyond the mountain saving its best for the very end of day, the cooling autumn air taking its large place in lives and memories, I passed a bunch of preteen kidguys on their bicycles, racing with all the rush of youth through the last of the light in their desperate afterschool yearning to have some freeforall fun before dinner, the sight and sound of them sending me instantly all the way back to my own boyhood at that age in upstate NY, when the same fire had filled me after school on autumn days with my friends on our bicycles speeding down the tree-arched streets in search of any adventure that would match the life that swelled our hearts amid the fragrance of air turning chill, leaves making crisp new sounds in the slightly harsher breeze, all my turnings thence leading to me here now, passing through a Japanese village over half a century later, filling me with exactly the same excitement and yearning as I felt then - though now I wear it differently - but what a wonderful moment it was, back then - a moment is all it was - speeding toward the future with my boyhood friends, where are they now, down all the roads they’ve followed…