Biking Through Irvine

(14) Biking through Irvine

Between the bike rack at my apartment
and the front door of my students' home
there are six bridges
two each over roads,
freeways,
and streams,
and one place in the path
that arches excessively over
a railway track,
upon which a train whisks park-and-ride passengers
between San Diego and Los Angeles,
fathers that take jobs there while the kids stay safe behind.

Mothers shake their unseen baby-weight
by jogging with the latest model baby buggies,
and later let their triking toddlers set the pace,
and later still tote yoga mats through strip mall parking lots
while the kiddos thrive at high-performing schools.

On parent-teacher day,
half the children act as translators
for teachers that have generally no complaints.
Kids turn in their solid-colored extracurricular team jerseys
and go home to grandmothers they don't understand,
cooking food that no longer smells pleasant to them.

From an early age they take in small and manicured doses of nature.
They do not know enough to ask if the lakes are manmade.
They see how grass unfolds itself
in two-dimensional, crayola-colored planes,
watch as diverse forms of wildlife-- mainly squirrels and rabbits--
grow adorably fat on the seeds of non-native species.

It is a safely in-between place,
distant from both extremes
of the income spectrum,
of urban bustle and agrarian stagnation,
of exotic roots and American pop culture.

I pass tract and dis-tract homes,
apartments that could likely pay for mortgage
in another place,
imagine myself living
anywhere else
and grow restless
just in knowing
that I am
so very
safe.