Thursday, July 07, 2011

The Rider

roller skating

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.

--Naomi Shihab Nye

Published in A Family of Poems, My Favorite Poetry for Children, 2005