Catching the School Bus

One by one they shoot out of the house,
projectiles launched at one-minute intervals,
four tow-headed boys in stairstep sizes,
brothers burning the half-block race to the bus stop.
You can feel the bass rumble
before the bus appears,
hear its asthmatic wheeze
as it struggles up the hill, anticipate
the metallic complaint of its brakes,
its voiceprint unchanged
in the twenty years since
you were the boy running for that bus.
Each boy leans into the effort,
his forward momentum so strong
that all that keeps these wispy creatures
from taking flight is the ballast of
their overstuffed, oversized backpacks,
as if the backpacks have sprouted legs,
carrying their boy cargo forward
to carefully deposit it
into the cradle of the school bus.