Member Poem

I Want One
 
Some facet of brakes or wheels strikes sparks
from the cobbles and the boy whoops and laughs
as his mother bumps the wheelchair along.
"Like a fairground ride!" she beams at me
and I smile back, doing my crutches-waltz
over the uneven stones, each unique like faces
or fingerprints, and the gentle moss between.
 
The sound and feel of crutch and feet:
clack-thud on the cobbles, silent softness
on moss, transmitted up to my arms.
The wheelchair sounds like a zipwire or train.
 
A girl, about six, is being dragged along by
her mother, her little legs reluctant. She looks
at the wheeling laughing boy in his sparking
chariot and tugs at her mother's hand: "Mom!
Look, Mom! See that? I want one! I want one!"