the rider

Because I'm in a bike-enamored mood of late (of always, but especially of late because of the warming weather), here's a poem for the day:

The Rider

by Naomi Shihab Nye

A boy told me
if he roller-skated fast enough
his loneliness couldn't catch up to him,

the best reason I ever heard
for trying to be a champion.

What I wonder tonight
pedaling hard down King William Street
is if it translates to bicycles.

A victory! To leave your loneliness
panting behind you on some street corner
while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,
pink petals that have never felt loneliness,
no matter how slowly they fell.





Leave my heart in the dust. The loneliness of despair. It's true--I think--this victory. It can be won. I've floated free into clouds of non-despair, into patches of sunlight, into freedom from bounds. It doesn't necessarily have to come on a bike. Running, swimming, reading, laughing, walking, hiking, frisbeeing, bouldering, writing, climbing, footballing--I've felt it. And will feel it again; in this I hope.