Wheelbarrow

I never had the strength, my hands deep
in the tough and tickling grass. Something
in my elbows always gave way and dropped

me on my face. I lost a tooth that way, the swift
collapse of arms and then my open mouth
jammed into the ground. Some grass went up

my nose. That’s how I remember it, again
that attempt to race along upside down
bipedal, someone nameless gripping my feet

like loppers in a gardener’s sweating hands.
But there were too many other crashes, too many
other teeth dangling bloody from a doorknob’s string

or smacked on the monkey bars. And the ones
so patiently worked loose, twist, shove, the grip
of flesh finally letting go. Oh, I had dozens,

all of them right in the middle, in the front,
and each a dramatic tale of failure, of triumph,
of tripping and falling, of losing my balance,
and finding strange new spaces in my memory.