By bike, I came to Poppel
and Cleves, abroad
Friends lived in Gendt

I got firm thighs and calves
school was in the city
college in another city

Then my world no longer fitted
in a circle of an hour's travel
but in Amsterdam it was again

like in my childhood, everything
nearby, the world big enough
to move in it under my own power

New friends within reach
and occasionally new neighbours
but family members scattered

across distant regions, sometimes travelled
in call and engine time, never just
together in between